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LIFE OF FROUDE 




Iry^j'^^-m^ a^i!yy/u?-^<>^ 






THE 

LIFE OF FROUDE 



BY 

HERBERT PAUL 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 

1905 



0-/ 19'/ 






(2310) 



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PREFACE 

Although eleven years have elapsed since Mr. Fronde's 
death, no biography of him has, so far as I know, ap- 
peared. This book is an attempt to tell the public 
something about a man whose writings have a per- 
manent place in the literature of England. 

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my obligation to 
Miss Margaret Froude for having allowed me the use 
of such written material as existed. A large number of 
Mr. Fronde's letters were destroyed after his death, and 
it was not intended by the family that any biography 
of him should be written. Finding that I was engaged 
upon the task. Miss Froude supplied those facts, dates, 
and papers which were essential to the accuracy of the 
narrative. Mr. Fronde's niece, Mrs. St. Leger Harrison, 
known to the world as Lucas Malet, has allowed me to 
use some of her uncle's letters to her mother. 

Lady Margaret Cecil has, with great kindness, permitted 
me to make copious extracts from Mr. Fronde's letters 
to her mother, the late Countess of Derby. I must 
also express my gratitude to Sir Thomas Sanderson, 
Lord Derby's executor, to Cardinal Newman's literary 



vi PREFACE 

representative Mr. Edward Bellasis, and to Mr. Arthur 
Clough, son of Froude's early friend the poet. 

Mr. James Rye, of Balliol College, Oxford, placed at 
my disposal, with singular generosity, the results of 
his careful examination into the charges made against 
Mr. Froude by Mr, Freeman. 

The Rector of Exeter was good enough to show me the 
entries in the college books bearing upon Mr. Froude's 
resignation of his Fellowship, and to tell me everything 
he knew on the subject. 

My indebtedness to the late Sir John Skelton's de- 
lightful book, The Table Talk of Shirley, will be obvious 
to my readers. 

I have, in conclusion, to thank my old friend Mr. 
Birrell, for lending me his very rare copy of the funeral 
sermon preached by Mr. Froude at Torquay. 

October 30, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I - 

CHILDHOOD 

Early Surroundings— Father and Mother— Hurrell Froude 
—First School— Sent to Westminster— Returns Home 
in Disgrace— Archdeacon Froude's Harsh Treatment— 
Hurrell's Attitude— Preparation for Oxford— Death 
of Hurrell Froude 



CHAPTER II 

OXFORD 

Oriel College — Dr. Hawkins — J. H. Newman — Idle 

and Luxurious Life — His Engagement — Degree 

Tracts for The Times- Tutorship in Ireland— Mr. 
Cleaver— Dr. Pusey— Returns to Oxford— Chancellor's 
Prizeman — Employed by Newman— Ordination— 
Shadows of the Clouds, The Nemesis of Faith— KxtYiuv 
Clough— Charles Kingsley— Resignation of Fellowship 19 

CHAPTER III 

LIBERTY 

Worldly Prospects and Intellectual Position— Sojourn with 
Kingsley — Crabb Robinson — Monckton Milnes — 
Manchester Tutorship — Marriage — Max Miiller — 
Views on Socialism— Matthew Arnold— The Carlyles— 
F. D. Maurice— Commencement of The History of 
England «•...... en 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

THE HISTORY 

PAGE 

study and Research — Carlyle's Verdict on the Early Chap- 
ters — The First Two Volumes published — Reviews — 
The Weak Points — Death of Mrs. Froude — Editor- 
ship of Fraser's Magazine — Journey to Spain — Re- 
search at Simancas — Second Marriage — The Hatfield 
Papers — Lord and Lady Salisbury — Lord Rector of St. 
Andrews University — The Completion of the History . 72 

CHAPTER V 

FROUDE AND FREEMAN 

The Saturday Review — Freeman's Hatred of Froude — His 
Contempt for Froude's Research — The Contemporary 
Review — Dean Hook — Froude's Accuracy assailed by 
Freeman — Froude's Challenge — The Reply — The Con- 
troversy renewed — " A Few Words on Mr. Freeman " 
— " Last Words on Mr. Froude " — Freeman's Defeat — 
Froude vindicated . . . . . . -147 

CHAPTER VI 

IRELAND AND AMERICA 

Catholicism and Irish Aspirations — Daniel O'Connell — The 
English in Ireland — Invited to Lecture in America 
— Professor Tyndall — The New York Banquet — 
The Lectures — American Criticism — Irish Hostility 
— Father Burke — Mr. Peabody — Carlyle and The 
English in Ireland — Carlyle on Lecky — Lady Derby — 
Gladstone .,..,.... 199 

CHAPTER VII 

SOUTH AFRICA 

Death of Froude's second wife — Lord Carnarvon — 
Visits South Africa — Lord Kimberley — President Brand 
— Returns to England — Second Visit to South Africa — 
Lord Wolseley — Sir Bartle Frere — Report of Visit 
laid before Parliament — South African Policy — Pro- 
posed Parliamentary Candidature — Lord Derby — 
The Eastern Question 250 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER VIII 

FROUDE AND CARLYLE 

PAGE 

Friendship with Ci^rlyle — A Picture of Mrs. Carlyle — Her 
Sudden Death — The Letters and Memorials — Publica- 
tion of The Reminiscences — Mary Carlyle's Charge — 
Froude's Defence — Mr. Justice Stephen — John Forster 
— Dr. Carlyle — Publication of First Two Volumes of 
Carlyle's Life — The Storm of Protest — Carlyle's Life 
in London -Professor Norton ..... 288 

CHAPTER IX 

BOOKS AND TRAVEL 

CcBsar — Lady Derby — Monograph on Bunyan — Cardinal 
Newman — In South Africa again — Australia, New 
Zealand, and America visited — The West-Indian Tour — 
Oceana — The English in the West Indies — The Two 
Chiefs of Dunhoy — Life of Lord Beaconsfield—Sea 
Studies . . . . . . . . -337 

CHAPTER X 

THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 

Freeman's Death — Lord Salisbury — Regius Professorship 
of Modern History — Life at Oxford — Popularity and 
Success of Lectures — Sir John Skelton — William Froude 
— The Council of Trent — English Seamen of the Sixteenth 
Century — Erasmus . . . . . . .381 

CHAPTER XI 

THE END 

Cherwell Edge — Oxford — The Last Lecture — The Life and 
Letters of Erasmus — Failure of Health — Lord Ducie — 
Sir George Grey — Last Days — Death — The Man, the 
Historian, and the Biographer , . . . - 4^3 

INDEX . .447 



LIFE OF FROUDE 



CHAPTER I 

CHILDHOOD 

IN reading biographies I always skip the gene- 
alogical details. To be born obscure and 
to die famous has been described as the acme of 
human felicity. However that may be, whether 
fame has anything to do with happiness or no, it 
is a man himself, and not his ancestors, whose life 
deserves, if it does deserve, to be written. Such 
was Froude's own opinion, and it is the opinion 
of most sensible people. Few, indeed, are the 
families which contain more than one remarkable 
figure, and this is the rock upon which the here- 
ditary principle always in practice breaks. For 
human lineage is not subject to the scientific tests 
which alone could give it solid value as positive 
or negative evidence. There is nothing to show 
from what source, other than the ultimate source 
of every good and perfect gift, Froude derived 
his brilliant and splendid powers. He was a 
(2310) I 



2 LIFE OF FROUDE 

gentleman, and he did not care to find or make 
for himself a pedigree. He knew that the Froudes 
had been settled in Devonshire time out of mind 
as yeomen with small estates, and that one of 
them, to whom his own father always referred 
with contempt, had bought from the Heralds' 
College what Gibbon calls the most useless of all 
coats, a coat of arms. Froude's grandfather did 
a more sensible thing by marrying an heiress, 
a Devonshire heiress. Miss Hurrell, and thereby 
doubling his possessions. Although he died be- 
fore he was five-and-twenty, he left four children 
behind him, and his only son was the historian's 
father. 

James Anthony Froude, known as Anthony to 
those who called him by his Christian name, was 
born at Dartington, two miles from Totnes, on 
St. George's Day, Shakespeare's birthday, the 
23rd of April, 1818. His father, who had taken a 
pass degree at Oxford, and had then taken orders, 
was by that time Rector of Dartington and 
Archdeacon of Totnes. Archdeacon Froude be- 
longed to a type of clergyman now almost extinct 
in the Church of England, though with strong 
idiosyncrasies of his own. Orthodox without 
being spiritual, he was a landowner as well as a 
parson, a high and dry Churchman, an active 
magistrate, a zealous Tory, with a solid and un- 
clerical income of two or three thousand a year. 
He was a personage in the county, as well as a 
dignitary of the Church. Every one in Devon- 



CHILDHOOD 3 

shire knew the name of Froude, if only from 
" Parson Froude," no credit to his cloth, who 
appears as Parson Chowne in Blackmore's once 
popular novel, The Maid of Sker. But the 
Archdeacon was a man of blameless life, and 
not in the least like Parson Froude. A hard 
rider and passionately fond of hunting, he was 
a good judge of a horse and usually the best 
mounted man in the field. One of his exploits 
as an undergraduate was to jump the turn- 
pike gate on the Abingdon road with pennies 
under his seat, between his knees and the saddle, 
and between his feet and the stirrups, without 
dropping one. 

Although he had been rather extravagant and 
something of a dandy, he was able to say that he 
could account for every sixpence he spent after the 
age of twenty-one. On leaving Oxford he settled 
down to the hfe of a country parson with con- 
scientious thoroughness, and was reputed the 
best magistrate in the South Hams. Farming 
his own glebe, as he did, with skill and knowledge, 
perpetually occupied, as he was, with clerical 
or secular business, he found the Church of 
England, not then disturbed by any wave of 
enthusiasm, at .once necessary and sufficient 
to his religious sense. His horror of Noncon- 
formists was such that he would not have a copy 
of The Pilgrim's Progress in his house. He up- 
held the Bishop and all established institutions, 
believing that the way to heaven was to turn to 



4 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the right and go straight on. There were many 
such clergymen in his day. 

In appearance he was a cold, hard, stern man, 
despising sentiment, reticent and self -rest rained. 
But beneath the surface there lay deep emotions 
and an aesthetic sense, of which his drawings were 
the only outward sign. To these sketches he 
himself attached no value. " You can buy better 
at the nearest shop for sixpence," he would say, 
if he heard them praised. Yet good judges 
of art compared tjiem with the early sketches 
of Turner, and Ruskin afterwards gave them 
enthusiastic praise. Mr. Froude had married, 
when quite a young man, Margaret Spedding, 
the daughter of an old college friend, from 
Armathwaite in Cumberland. Her nephew is 
known as the prince of Baconian scholars and 
the J. S. of Tennyson's poem. She was a woman 
of great beauty, deeply religious, belonging to 
a family more strongly given to letters and 
to science than the Froudes, whose tastes were 
rather for the active life of sport and adven- 
ture. One can imagine the Froudes of the six- 
teenth century manning the ships of Queen Bess 
and sailing with Frobisher or Drake. For many 
years Mrs. Froude was the mistress of a happy 
home, the mother of many handsome sons and 
fair daughters. The two eldest, Hurrell and 
Robert, were especially striking, brilhant lads, 
popular at Eton, their father's companions in 
the hunting-field or on the moors. But in Darting- 



CHILDHOOD 5 

ton Rectory, with all its outward signs of pros- 
perity and welfare, there were the seeds of death. 
Before Anthony Froude, the youngest of eight, 
was three years old, his mother died of a dechne, 
and within a few years the same illness proved 
fatal to five of her children. The whole aspect 
of life at Dartington was changed. The Arch- 
deacon retired into himself and nursed his griel 
in silence, melancholy, isolated, austere. 

This irreparable calamity was made by cir- 
cumstances doubly calamitous. Though des- 
tined to survive all his brothers and sisters, 
Anthony was a weak, sickly child, not considered 
likely to grow up. From his father's lips he 
never heard the mention of his mother's name, 
nor was the Archdeacon himself capable of 
showing any tenderness whatever. In place of 
a mother the little boy had an aunt, who applied 
to him principles of Spartan severity. At the 
mature age of three he was ducked every morning 
at a trough, to harden him, in the ice-cold water 
from a spring, and whenever he was naughty 
he was whipped. It may have been from this 
unpleasant discipline that he derived the contempt 
for self-indulgence, and the indifference to pain, 
which distinguished him in after life. On the 
other hand, he was allowed to read what he liked, 
and devoured Grimm's Tales, The Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendom, and The Arabian Nights. 
He was an imaginative and reflective child, full 
of the wonder in which philosophy begins. 



6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

The boy felt from the first the romantic beauty 
of his home. Dartington Rectory, some two miles 
from Totnes, is surrounded by woods which over- 
hang precipitously the clear waters of the River 
Dart. Dartington Hall, which stood near the 
rectory, is one of the oldest houses in England, 
originally built before the Conquest, and com- 
pleted with great magnificence in the reign of 
Richard II. The vast banqueting-room was, in the 
nineteenth century, a ruin, and open to the sky. 
The remains of the old quadrangle were a treasure 
to local antiquaries, and the whole place was full 
of charm for an imaginative boy. Mr. Champer- 
nowne, the owner, was an intimate friend of the 
Archdeacon, to whom he left the guardianship 
of his children, so that the Froudes were as much 
at home in their squire's house as in the parsonage 
itself. Although most of his brothers and sisters 
were too old to be his companions, the group in 
which his first years were passed was an unusually 
spirited and vivacious one. Newman, who was 
one of Hurr ell's visitors from Oxford, has described 
the young girls ** blooming and in high spirits," ^ 
full of gaiety and charm. 

The Froudes were a remarkable family. They 
had strong characters and decided tastes, but 
they had not their father's conventionality and 
preference for the high roads of life. They were 
devoted to sport, and at the same time abounded 
in mental vigour. All the brothers had the gift 

' Newman's Letters and Correspondence, ii, 7^, 



CHILDHOOD 7 

of drawing. John, though forced into a lawyer's 
office, would if left to himself have become an 
artist by profession; The nearest to Anthony in 
age was William, afterwards widely celebrated as 
a naval engineer. Then came Robert, the most 
attractive of the boys. A splendid athlete, 
compared by Anthony with a Greek statue, he 
had sweetness as well as depth of nature. His 
drawings of horses were the delight of his family ; 
and when his favourite hunter died he wrote a 
graceful elegy on the afflicting event. The in- 
fluence of his genial kindness was never forgotten 
by his youngest brother ; but there was a stronger 
and more dominating personality of which the 
effect was less beneficial to a sensitive and nervous 
child. 

Richard Hurrell Froude is regarded by High 
Churchmen as an originator of the Oxford Move- 
ment, and he impressed all his contemporaries 
by the brilliancy of his gifts. Dean Church 
went so far as to compare him with Pascal. 
But his ideas of bringing up children were 
naturally crude, and his treatment of Anthony 
was more harsh than wise. His early character 
as seen at home is described by his mother in a 
letter written a year before her death, when he 
was seventeen. Fond as she was of him and 
proud of his brilliant promise, she did not know 
what to make of him, so wayward was he and 
inconsiderately selfish. " I am in a wretched state 
of health," the poor lady explained, " and quiet 



8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

is important to my recovery and quite essential to 
my comfort, yet he disturbs it for what he calls 
' funny tormenting/ without the slightest feeling, 
twenty times a day. At one time he kept one of 
his brothers screaming, from a sort of teasing play, 
for near an hour under my window. At another 
he acted a wolf to his baby brother, whom he had 
promised never to frighten again." ^ 

Anthony was the baby brother, and though 
this form of teasing was soon given up, the 
temper which dictated it remained. Hurrell, it 
should be said, inflicted severe discipline upon 
himself to curb his own refractory nature. In 
applying the same to his little brother he showed 
that he did not understand the difference between 
Anthony's character and his own. But lack of 
insight and want of sympathy were among Hurrell' s 
acknowledged defects. 

Conceiving that the child wanted spirit, Hurrell 
once took him up by the heels, and stirred with his 
head the mud at the bottom of a stream. Another 
time he threw him into deep water out of a boat 
to make him manly. But he was not satisfied 
by inspiring physical terror. Invoking the aid 
of the praeternatural, he taught his brother that 
the hollow behind the house was haunted by a 
monstrous and malevolent phantom, to which, 
in the plenitude of his imagination, he gave the 
name of Peningre. Gradually the child dis- 
covered that Peningre was an illusion, and began 

* Guiney's Hurrell Froude, p. 8, 



CHILDHOOD 9 

to suspect that other ideas of Hurrell's might be 
illusions too. Superstition is the parent of scep- 
ticism from the cradle to the grave. At the same 
time his own faculty of invention was rather 
stimulated than repressed. He was encouraged 
in telling, as children will, imaginative stories of 
things which never occurred. 

In spite of ghosts and muddy water Anthony 
worshipped Hurrell, a born leader of men, who 
had a fascination for his brothers and sisters, 
though not perhaps of the most wholesome 
kind. The Archdeacon himself had no crotchets. 
He was a religious man, to whom religion 
meant duty rather than dogma, a light to 
the feet, and a, lantern for the path. A Tory 
and a Churchman, he was yet a moderate Tory 
and a moderate Churchman ; prudent, sensible, 
a man of the world. To Hurrell Dissenters were 
rogues and idiots, a Liberal was half an infidel, 
a Radical was, at least in intention, a thief. From 
the effect of this nonsense Anthony was saved 
for a time by his first school. At the age of nine he 
was sent to Buckfastleigh, five miles up the River 
Dart, where Mr. Lowndes, the rector and patron 
of the living, took boarders and taught them, 
mostly Devonshire boys. Buckfastleigh was not 
a bad school for the period. There was plenty 
of caning, but no bullying, and Latin was well 
taught. Froude was a gentle, amiable child, 
" such a very good-tempered little fellow that, in 
spite of his sawneyness, he is sure to be liked," 



10 LIFE OF FROUDE 

as his eldest brother wrote in 1828. He suffered 
at this time from an internal weakness, which 
made games impossible. His passion, which he 
never lost, was for Greek, and especially for 
Homer. With a precocity which Mill or Macaulay 
might have envied, he had read both the Iliad 
and the Odyssey twice before he was eleven. 
The standard of accuracy at Buckfastleigh was 
not high, and Froude's scholarship was inexact. 
What he learnt there was to enjoy Homer, to feel 
on friendly terms with the Greeks and Trojans, 
at ease with the everlasting wanderer in the best 
story-book composed by man. Anthony's holi- 
days were not altogether happy. He was made 
to work instead of amusing himself, and forced 
into an unwholesome precocity. Then at eleven 
he was sent to Westminster. 

In 1830 the reputation of Westminster stood 
high. The boarding-houses were well managed, 
the fagging in them was light, and their tone was 
good. Unhappily, in spite of the head master's 
remonstrances, Froude's father, who had spent a 
great deal of money on his other sons' education, 
insisted on placing him in college, which was then 
far too rough for a boy of his age and strength. 
On account of what he had read, rather than what 
he had learnt, at Buckfastleigh, he took a very 
high place, and was put with boys far older than 
himself. The fagging was excessively severe. The 
bullying was gross and unchecked. The sanitary 
accommodation was abominable. The language 



CHILDHOOD II 

of the dormitory was indecent and profane. 
Froude, whose health prevented him from the 
effective use pi nature's weapons, was woke by 
the hot points of cigars burning holes in his face, 
made drunk by being forced to swallow brandy 
punch, and repeatedly thrashed. He was also 
more than half starved, because the big fellows 
had the pick of the joints at dinner, and left the 
small fellows little besides the bone. Ox-tail 
soup at the pastrycook's took the place of a meal 
which the authorities were bound to provide. 
Scandalous as all this may have been, it was not 
peculiar to Westminster. The state of college 
at Winchester, and at Eton, was in many respects 
as bad. Public schools had not yet felt the 
influence of Arnold and of the reforming spirit. 
Head masters considered domestic details beneath 
them, and parents, if they felt any responsibility 
at all, persuaded themselves that boys were all 
the better for roughing it as a preparation for 
the discipline of the world. The case of Froude, 
however, was a peculiarly bad one. He was 
suffering from hernia, and the treatment might 
well have killed him. Although his fagging only 
lasted for a year, he was persistently bulHed and 
tormented, until. he forgot what he had learned, 
instead of adding to it. When the body is starved 
and ill-treated, the mind will not work. The 
head master. Dr. Williamson, was disappointed 
in a boy of whom he had expected so much, 
and wrote unfavourable reports. After enduring 



12 LIFE OF FROUDE 

undeserved and disabling hardships for three years 
and a half, Froude was taken away from West- 
minster at the age of fifteen. 

To escape from such a den of horrors was at 
first a relief. But he soon found that his miseries 
were not over. He came home in disgrace. His 
misfortunes were regarded as his faults, and the 
worst construction was put upon everything he 
said or did. His clothes and books had been 
freely stolen in the big, unregulated dormitory. 
He was accused of having pawned them, and his 
denials were not believed. If he had had a 
mother, aU might have been well, for no woman 
with a heart would assume that her child was 
lying. The Archdeacon, without a particle of evi- 
dence, assumed it at once, and beat the wretched 
boy severely in the presence of the approving 
Hurrell. Hurrell would have made an excellent 
inquisitor. His brother always spoke of him 
as peculiarly gifted in mind and in character ; 
but he knew little of human nature, and he 
doubtless fancied that in torturing Anthony's 
body he was helping Anthony's soul. To 
alter two words in the fierce couplet of the 
satirist, 

He said his duty, both to man and God, 
Required such conduct, which seemed very odd. 

Anthony was threatened, in the true inquisitorial 
spirit, with a series of floggings, until he should 
confess what he had not done. At last, however, 



CHILDHOOD 13 

he was set down as incorrigibly stupid^ and given 
up as a bad job. The Archdeacon arrived at the 
conclusion that his youngest son was a fool, and 
might as well be apprenticed to a tanner. Having 
hoped that he would be off his hands as a student 
of Christ Church at sixteen, he was bitterly dis- 
appointed, and took no pains to conceal his 
disappointment. 

To Anthony himself it seemed a matter of 
indifference what became of him, and a hope- 
less mystery why he had been brought into 
the world. He had no friend. The consumption 
in the family was the boy's only hope. His 
mother had died of it, and his brother Robert, 
who had been kind to him, and taught him to 
ride. It was already showing itself in Hurrell. 
His own time could not, he thought, be long. 
Meanwhile, he was subjected to petty humiliations, 
in which the inventive genius of Hurrell may be 
traced. He was not, for instance, permitted to 
have clothes from a tailor. Old garments were 
found in the house, and made up for him in un- 
couth shapes by a woman in the village. His 
father seldom spoke to him, and never said a kind 
word to him. By way of keeping him quiet, he was 
set to copy out Barrow's sermons. It is dif&cult 
to understand how the sternest disciplinarian, being 
human, could have treated his own motherless 
boy with such severity. The Archdeacon acted, no 
doubt, upon a theory, the theory that sternness to 
children is the truest kindness in the long run. 



14 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Well might Macaulay say that he would rather a 
boy should learn to lisp all the bad words in the 
language than grow up without a mother. Froude's 
interrupted studies were nothing compared to a 
childhood without love, and there was nobody to 
make him feel the meaning of the word. Fortun- 
ately, though his father was always at home, his 
brother was much away, and he was a good deal 
left to himself after Robert's death. Hurrell did 
not disdain to employ him in translating John of 
Salisbury's letters for his own Life of Becket. 
No more was heard of the tanner, who had perhaps 
been only a threat. While he wandered in soli- 
tude through the woods, or by the river, his health 
improved, he acquired a passion for nature, and 
in his father's library, which was excellent, he 
began eagerly to read. He devoured Sharon 
Turner's History of England, and the great work 
of Gibbon. Shakespeare and Spenser introduced 
him to the region of the spirit in its highest and 
deepest, its purest and noblest forms. Un- 
happily he also fell in with Byron, the worst 
poet that can come into the hands of a boy, and 
always retained for him an admiration which 
would now be thought excessive. By these 
means he gained much. He discovered what 
poetry was, what history was, and he learned 
also the lesson that no one can teach, the hard 
lesson of self-reliance. 

This was the period, as everybody knows, of 
the Oxford Movement, in which Hurrell Froude 



CHILDHOOD 15 

acted as a pioneer. Hurrell's ideal was the Church 
of the Middle Ages represented by Thomas 
Becket. In the vacations he brought some of 
his Tractarian friends home with him, and Anthony- 
listened to their talk. Strange talk it seemed. 
They found out, these young men, that Dr. Arnold, 
one of the most devoutly religious men who ever 
lived, was not a Christian. The Reformation 
was an infamous rebellion against authority. 
Liberalism, not the Pope, was Antichrist. The 
Church was above the State, and the supreme 
ruler of the world. Transubstantiation, which 
the Archdeacon abhorred, was probably true. 
Hurrell Froude was a brilliant talker, a consum- 
mate dialectician, and an ardent proselytising 
controversialist. But his young listener knew 
a little history, and perceived that, to put it 
mildly, there were gaps in Hurrell's knowledge. 
When he heard that the Huguenots were de- 
spicable, that Charles I. was a saint, that the Old 
Pretender was James III., that the Revolution 
of 1688 was a crime, and that the Non-jurors 
were the true confessors of the English Church, 
it did not seem to square with his reading, or 
his reflections. Perhaps, after all, the infalhble 
Hurrell might be .wrong. One fear he had never 
been able to instil into his brother, and that was 
the fear of death. When asked what would hap- 
pen if he were suddenly called to appear in the 
presence of God, Anthony replied that he was in 
the presence of God from morning to night and 



i6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

from night to morning. That abiding conscious- 
ness he never lost, and when his speculations 
went furthest they invariably stopped there. 

Left with his father and one sister, the boy drank 
in the air of Dartmoor, and grew to love Devonshire 
with an unalterable affection. He also continued 
his reading, and invaded theology. Newton on 
the Prophecies remarked that " if the Pope was 
not Antichrist, he had bad luck to be so Uke him," 
and Renan had not yet explained that Antichrist 
was neither the Pope nor the French Revolution, 
but the Emperor Nero. From Pearson on the 
Creed he learned the distinction between " be- 
lieving " and " believing in." When we beheve 
in a person, we trust him. When we believe a 
thing, we are not sure of it. This is one of the 
few theological distinctions which are also dif- 
ferences. Meanwhile, the Archdeacon had been 
watching his youngest son, and had observed that 
he had at least a taste for books. Perhaps he 
might not be the absolute dolt that Hurrell pro- 
nounced him. He had lost five years, so far as 
classical training was concerned, by the mis- 
management of the Archdeacon himself. Still, he 
was only seventeen, and there was time to repair 
the waste. He was sent to a private tutor's in 
preparation for Oxford. His tutor, a dreamy, 
poetical High Churchman, devoted to Words- 
worth and Keble, failed to understand his cha- 
racter or to give him an interest in his work, and 
a sixth year was added to the lost five. 



CHILDHOOD 17 

During this year his brother Hurrell died, and 
the tragic extinction of that commanding spirit 
seemed a pres^age of his own early doom. Two of 
his sisters, both lately married, died within a few 
months of Hurrell, and of each other. The Arch- 
deacon, incapable of expressing emotion, became 
more reserved than ever, and scarcely spoke at all. 
Sadly was he disappointed in his children. Most 
of them went out of the world long before him. 
Not one of them distinguished himself in those 
regular professional courses which alone he 
understood as success. Hurrell joined ardently, 
while his life was spared, in the effort to 
counteract the Reformation and Romanise the 
Church of England. William, though he became 
a naval architect of the highest possible dis- 
tinction, and performed invaluable services for 
his country, worked on his own account, and 
made his own experiments in his own fashion. 
Anthony, too, took his line, and went his way, 
whither his genius led him, indifferent to the 
opinion of the world. His had been a strange 
childhood, not without its redeeming features. 
Left to himself, seeing his brothers and sisters 
die around him, expecting soon to follow them, 
the boy grew up. stern, hardy, and self-reUant. 
He was by no means a bookworm. He had 
learned to ride in the best mode, by falling off, 
and had acquired a passion for fishing which 
lasted as long as his Ufe. There were few better 
yachtsmen in England than Froude, and he could 

(2310) 2 



;e8 life of FROUDE 

manage a boat as well as any sailor in his native 
county. His religious education, as he always 
said himself, was thoroughly wholesome and 
sound, consisting of morality and the Bible. 
Sympathy no doubt he missed, and he used to 
regard the early death of his brother Robert 
as the loss of his best friend. For his father's 
character he had a profound admiration as an 
embodiment of all the manly virtues, stoical rather 
than Christian, never mawkish nor effeminate. 



CHAPTER II 

OXFORD 

WESTMINSTER, it will have been seen, 
did less than nothing for Froude. His 
progress there was no progress at all, but a move- 
ment backwards, physical and mental deteriora- 
tion. He recovered himself at home, his father's 
coldness and unkindness notwithstanding. But 
it was not until he went to Oxford that his 
real intellectual life began, and that he realised 
his own powers. In October, 1836, four months 
after Hurrell's death, he came into residence at 
Oriel. That distinguished society was then at 
the climax of its fame; Dr. Hawkins was begin- 
ning his long career as Provost; Newman and 
Church were Fellows; the Oriel Common Room 
had a reputation unrivalled in Oxford, and was 
famous far beyond the precincts of the University. 
But of these circumstances Froude thought little, 
or nothing. He ffelt free. For the first time in 
his life the means of social intercourse and enjoy- 
ment were at his disposal. His internal weakness 
had been overcome, and his health, in spite of all 
he had gone through, was good. He had an ample 
allowance, and facilities for spending it among 

19 



20 LIFE OF FROUDE 

pleasant companions in agreeable ways. He had 
shot up to his full height, five feet eleven inches, 
and from his handsome features there shone those 
piercing dark eyes which riveted attention where- 
ever they were turned. His loveless, cheerless 
boyhood was over, and the hberty of Oxford, 
which, even after the mild constraint of a public 
school, seems boundless, was to him the perfection 
of bhss. He began to develop those powers of 
conversation which in after years gave him an 
irresistible influence over men and women, young 
and old. Convinced that, like his brothers and 
sisters, he had but a short time to hve, and having 
certainly been full of misery, he resolved to make 
the best of his time, and enjoy himself while he 
could. He was under no obhgation to any one, 
unless it were to the Archdeacon for his pocket- 
money. His father and his brother, doubtless 
with the best intentions, had made Hfe more 
painful for him after his mother's death than 
they could have made it if she had been aUve. 
But Hurrell was gone, his father was in Devonshire, 
and he could do as he pleased. He lived with 
the idle set in college ; riding, boating, and playing 
tennis, frequenting wines and suppers. From 
vicious excess his intellect and temperament 
preserved him. Deep down in his nature there 
was a strong Puritan element, to which his senses 
were subdued. Nevertheless, for two years he 
hved at Oxford in contented idleness, saying 
with Isaiah, and more literally than the prophet, 



OXFORD 21 

" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall 
die." 

It was a vs(holly unreformed Oxford to which 
Froude came. If it " breathed the last enchant- 
ments of the Middle Age," it was mediaeval in its 
system too, and the most active spirits of the 
place, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, were 
frank reactionaries, who hated the very name of 
reform. Even a reduction in the monstrous 
number of Irish Bishoprics pertaining to the 
estabhshment was indignantly denounced as 
sacrilege, and was the immediate cause of Keble's 
sermon on National Apostasy to which the famous 
** movement " has been traced. John Henry 
Newman was at that time residing in Oriel, not 
as a tutor, but as Vicar of St. Mary's. He was 
kind to Froude for Hurrell's sake, and introduced 
him to the reading set. The fascination of his 
character acted at once as a spell. Froude 
attended his sermons, and was fascinated still 
more. For a time, however, the effect was merely 
aesthetic. The young man enjoyed the voice, the 
eloquence, the thinking power of the preacher as 
he might have enjoyed a sonata of Beethoven's. 
But his acquaintance with the reading men was 
not kept up, and he led an idle, luxurious life. 
Nobody then dreamt of an Oxford Commission, 
and the Colleges, like the University, were left to 
themselves. They were not economically managed, 
and the expenses of the undergraduates were 
heavy. Their battels were high, and no check 



22 LIFE OF FROUDE 

was put upon the bills which they chose to run 
up with tradesmen. Froude spent his father's 
money, and enjoyed himself. The dissipation was 
not flagrant. He was never a sensualist, nor a 
Sybarite. Even then he had a frugal mind, and 
knew well the value of money. " I remember," 
he says in The Oxford Counter-Reformation, an 
autobiographical essay — '* I remember calculating 
that I could have lived at a boarding-house on 
contract, with every luxury which I had in college, 
at a reduction of fifty per cent." ^ He was not 
given to coarse indulgence, and idleness was 
probably his worst sin at Oxford. But his inno- 
cence of evil was not ignorance ; and though 
he never led a fast life himself, he knew perfectly 
well how those lived who did. 

An intellect like Froude' s seldom slumbers long. 
He had to attend lectures, and his old love of 
Homer revived. Plato opened a new world, a 
world which never grows old, and becomes fresher 
the more it is explored. Herodotus proved more 
charming than The Arabian Nights. Thucydides 
showed how much wisdom may be contained in 
the form of history. Froude preferred Greek to 
Latin, and sat up at night to read the Philodetes, 
the only work of literature that ever moved him 
to tears. iEschylus divided his allegiance with 
Sophocles. But the author who most completely 
mastered him, and whom he most completely 
mastered, was Pindar. The Olympian Odes seemed 

' Short Studies on Great Subjects, 4th series, p. 180. 



OXFORD 23 

to him like the Elgin Marbles in their serene 
and unapproachable splendour. All this classical 
reading, though it cannot have been fruitless, was 
not done systematically for the schools. Froude 
had no ambition, believing that he should soon 
die. But a reading-party during the Long Vaca- 
tion of 1839 resulted in an engagement, which 
changed the course of his life. 

Hitherto he had been under the impression that 
nobody cared for him at all, and that it mattered 
not what became of him. The sense of being 
valued by another person made him value him- 
self. He became ambitious, and worked hard for 
his degree. He remembered how the master of 
his first school had prophesied that he would be 
a Bishop. He did not want to be a Bishop, but 
he began to think that such grandeur would not 
have been predicted of a fool. Abandoning his 
idle habits, he read night and day that he might 
distinguish himself in the young lady's eyes. After 
six months her father interfered. He had no con- 
fidence in the stability of this very young suitor's 
character, and he put an end to the engagement. 
Froude was stunned by the blow, and gave up 
all hope of a first class. In any case there would 
have been difficulties. His early training in 
scholarship had not been accurate, and he suffered 
from the blunders of his education. But under 
the influence of excitement he had so far made 
up for lost time that he got, hke Hurrell, a 
second class in the final classical schools. His 



24 LIFE OF FROUDE 

qualified success gave him, no satisfaction. He 
was suffering from a bitter sense of disappoint- 
ment and wrong. It seemed to him that he 
was marked out for misfortune, and that there 
was no one to help him or to take any trouble 
about him. Thrown back upon himself, however, 
he conquered his discouragement and resolved 
that he would be the master of his fate. 

It was in the year 1840 that Froude took his 
degree. Newman was then at the height of his 
power and influence. The Tracts for the Times, 
which Mrs. Browning in Aurora Leigh calls ^^ tracts 
against the times," were popular with under- 
graduates, and High Churchmen were making 
numerous recruits. Newman's sermons are still 
read for their style. But we can hardly imagine 
the effect which they produced when they were 
delivered. The preacher's unrivalled command 
of English, his exquisitely musical voice, his utter 
unworldliness, the fervent evangehcal piety which 
his high Anglican doctrine did not disturb, were 
less moving than his singular power, which he 
seemed to have derived from Christ Himself, 
of reading the human heart. The young men 
who listened to him felt, each of them, as if he 
had confessed his inmost thoughts to Newman, 
as if Newman were speaking to him alone. And 
yet, from his own point of view, there was a 
danger in his arguments, a danger which he pro- 
bably did not see himself, peculiarly insidious to 
an acute, subtle, speculative mind like Froude' s. 



OXFORD 25 

Newman's intellect, when left to itself, was so 
clear, so powerful, so intense, that it cut through 
sophistry hk^ a knife, and went straight from 
premisses to conclusion. But it was only left 
to itself within narrow and definite hmits. He 
never suffered from religious doubts. From Evan- 
gelical Protestantism to Roman Catholicism he 
passed by slow degrees without once entering the 
domain of scepticism. Dissenting altogether from 
Bishop Butler's view that reason is the only faculty 
by ,which we can judge even of revelation, he set 
religion apart, outside reason altogether. From 
the pulpit of St. Mary's he told his congregation 
that Hume's argument against miracles was 
logically sound. It was really more probable 
that the witnesses should be mistaken than that 
Lazarus should have been raised from the dead. 
But, all the same, Lazarus was raised from the 
dead : we were required by faith to believe it, and 
logic had nothing to do with the matter. How 
Butler would have answered Hume, Butler to 
whom probability was the guide of life, we cannot 
tell. Newman's answer was not satisfactory to 
Froude. If Hume were right, how could he also 
be wrong ? Newman might say, with TertuUian, 
Credo quia impossihile. But mankind in general 
are not convinced by paradox, and ** to be sud- 
denly told that the famous argument against 
miracles was logically valid after all was at least 
startling." ^ 

^ Short Studies on Gveat Subjects, 4th series, p. 205. 



26 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Perplexed by this dilemma, Froude remained 
at Oxford as a graduate, taking pupils in what 
was then called science, and would now be called 
philosophy, for the Honour School of Literce 
Humaniores. He was soon offered, and accepted, 
a tutorship in Ireland. His pupil's father, Mr. 
Cleaver, was rector of Delgany in the county of 
Wicklow. Mr. Cleaver was a dignified, stately 
clergyman of the Evangelical school. Froude had 
been taught by his brother at home, and by his 
friends at Oxford, to despise Evangelicals as silly, 
ignorant, ridiculous persons. He saw in Mr. 
Cleaver the perfect type of a Christian gentleman, 
cultivated, pious, and well bred. Mrs. Cleaver was 
worthy of her husband. They were both models of 
practical Christianity. They and their circle held 
all the opinions about Catholicism and the Refor- 
mation which Newman and the Anglo-Catholics 
denounced. The real thing was always among 
them, and they did not want any imitation. " A 
clergyman," says Froude, ** who was afterwards 
a Bishop in the Irish Church, declared in my 
hearing that the theory of a Christian priesthood 
was a fiction ; that the notion of the Sacraments 
as having a mechanical efficacy irrespective of 
their conscious effect upon the mind of the re- 
ceiver was an idolatrous superstition ; that the 
Church was a human institution, which had varied 
in form in different ages, and might vary again ; 
that it was always fallible ; that it might have 
Bishops in England, and dispense with Bishops 



OXFORD 27 

in Scotland and Germany ; that a Bishop was 
merely an officer ; that the apostolical succession 
was probably Jalse as a fact — and, if a fact, im- 
plied nothing but historical continuity. Yet the 
man who said these things had devoted his whole 
life to his Master's service — thought of nothing 
else, and cared for nothing else." ^ 

Froude had been taught by his brother, and his 
brother's set, to believe that Dissenters were, 
morally and intellectually, the scum of the earth. 
Here were men who, though not Dissenters them- 
selves, held doctrines practically indistinguishable 
from theirs, and yet united the highest mental 
training with the service of God and the imitation 
of Christ. There was in the Cleaver household 
none of that reserve which the Tractarians in- 
culcated in matters of religion. The Christian 
standard was habitually held up as the guide of 
life and conduct, an example to be always followed 
whatever the immediate consequences that might 
ensue. Mr. Cleaver was a man of moderate for- 
tune, who could be hospitable without pinching, 
and he was acquainted with the best Protestant 
society in Ireland. Public affairs were discussed 
in his house with full knowledge, and without the 
frivolity affected by public men. 0' Council was 
at that time supreme in the government of Ireland, 
though his reign was drawing to a close. The 
Whigs held office by virtue of a compact with the 
Irish leader, and their Under-Secretary at Dublin 

^ Short Studies on Great Subjects, 4th series, p. 212. 



28 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Castle, Thomas Drummond, had gained the affec- 
tions of the people by his sympathetic states- 
manship. An epigrammatic speaker said in the 
House of Commons that Peel governed England, 
O'Connell governed Ireland, and the Whigs 
governed Downing Street. It was all coming 
to an end. Drummond died, the Whigs went out 
of ofhce. Peel governed Ireland, and England too. 
Froude just saw the last phase of O'Connelhsm, 
and he did not like it. In politics he never looked 
very far below the surface of things, and the 
wrongs of Ireland did not appeal to him. That 
Protestantism was the religion of the English pale, 
and of the Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster, not 
of the Irish people, was a fact outside his thoughts. 
He saw two things clearly enough. One was the 
strength and beauty of the religious faith by which 
the Cleavers and their friends hved. The other 
was the misery, squalor, and chronic discontent 
of the Catholic population, then almost twice as 
large as after the famine it became. He did not 
pause to reflect upon what had been done by laws 
made in England, or upon the iniquity of taxing 
Ireland in tithes for the Church of a small minority. 
He concluded simply that Protestantism meant 
progress, and Catholicism involved stagnation. 
He heard dark stories of Ribbonism, and was 
gravely assured that if Mr. Cleaver's Cathohc 
coachman, otherwise an excellent servant, were 
ordered to shoot his master, he would obey. 
Very likely Mr. Cleaver was right, though the 



OXFORD 29 

event did not occur. What was the true origin 
of Ribbonism, what made it dangerous, why it 
had the sympg.thy of the people, were questions 
which Froude could hardly be expected to 
answer, inasmuch as they were not answered by 
Sir Robert Peel. 

While Froude was at Delgany there appeared 
the once famous Tract Ninety, last of the series, 
unless we are to reckon Monckton Milnes's One 
Tract More. The author of Tract Ninety was 
Newman, and the ferment it made was prodigious. 
It was a subtle, ingenious, and plausible attempt 
to prove that the Articles and other formularies 
of the English Church might be honestly inter- 
preted in a Catholic sense, as embodying principles 
which the whole Catholic Church held before the 
Reformation, and held still. Mr. Cleaver and his 
circle were profoundly shocked. To them Catho- 
licism meant Roman Catholicism, or, as they 
called it. Popery. If a man were not a Protestant, 
he had no business to remain in the United Church 
of England and Ireland. If he did remain in it, 
he was not merely mistaken, but dishonest, and 
sophistry could not purge him from the moral 
stain of treachery to the institution of which he 
was an officer. Fronde's sense of chivalry was 
aroused, and he warmly defended Newman, whom 
he knew to be as honest as himself, besides being 
saintly and pure. If he had stopped there, all 
might have been well. Mr. Cleaver was himself 
high-minded, and could appreciate the virtue 



30 LIFE OF FROUDE 

of standing up for an absent friend. But Froude 
went further. He believed Newman to be legally 
and historically right. The Church of England 
was designed to be comprehensive. Chatham 
had spoken of it, not unfairly, as having an 
Arminian liturgy and Calvinist articles. When the 
Book of Common Prayer assumed its present 
shape, every citizen had been required to conform, 
and the policy of Elizabeth was to exclude no one. 
The result was a compromise, and Mr. Cleaver 
would have found it hard to reconcile his prin- 
ciples with the form of absolution in the Visitation 
of the Sick. This was, in Mr. Cleaver's opinion, 
sophistry almost as bad as Newman's, and Fronde's 
tutorship came to an end. There was no quarrel, 
and, after a tour through the south of Ireland, 
where he saw superstition and irreverence, solid 
churches, well-fed priests, and a starving peasantry 
in rags, Froude returned for a farewell visit to 
Delgany. On this occasion he met Dr. Pusey, 
who had been at Christ Church with Mr. Cleaver, 
and was then visiting Bray. Dr. Pusey, however, 
was not at his ease He was told by a clerical 
guest, afterwards a Bishop, with more freedom 
than courtesy, that they wanted no Popery 
brought to Ireland, they had enough of their own. 
The sequel is curious. For while Newman justi- 
fied Mr. Cleaver by going over to Rome, his own 
sons, including Froude' s pupil, became Puseyite 
clergymen of the highest possible type. 

Froude returned to Oxford at the beginning 



OXFORD 31 

of 1842, and won the Chancellor's Prize for an 
English essay on the influence of political economy 
in the development of nations. In the summer 
he was elected to a Devonshire Fellowship at 
Exeter, and his future seemed secure. But his 
mind was not at rest. It was an age of eccle- 
siastical controversy, and Oxford was the centre 
of what now seems a storm in a teacup. Froude 
became mixed up in it. On the one hand was 
the personal influence of Newman, who raised 
more doubts than he solved. On the other hand 
Fronde's experience of Evangelical Protestantism 
in Ireland, where he read for the first time The 
Pilgrim's Progress, contradicted the assumption 
of the Tractarians that High Catholicity was an 
essential note of true religion. Gradually the 
young Fellow became aware that High Church 
and Low Church did not exhaust the intellectual 
world. He read Carlyle's French Revolution, and 
Hero Worship, and Past and Present. He read 
Emerson too. For Emerson and Carlyle the Church 
of England did not exist. Carlyle despised it. 
Emerson had probably not so much as given it a 
thought in his life. But what struck Froude most 
about them was that they dealt with actual phaeno- 
mena, with things and persons around them, with 
the world as it was. They did not appeal to tradi- 
tion, or to antiquity, but to nature, and to the 
mind of man. The French Revolution, then but 
half a century old, was interpreted by Cailyle not 
as Antichrist, but as God's judgment upon sin. 



32 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Perhaps one view was not more historical than 
the other. But the first was groundless, and the 
second had at least some evidence in support of 
it. God may be, or rather must be, conceived 
to work through other instruments besides Chris- 
tianity. " Neither in Jerusalem, nor on this 
mountain, shall men worship the Father." Car- 
lyle completed what Newman had begun, and the 
dogmatic foundation of Froude's belief gave way. 
The two greatest geniuses of the age, as he always 
thought them, agreeing in little else, agreed that 
Christianity did not rest upon reason. Then 
upon what did it rest ? Reason appeals to every 
one. Faith is the appanage of a few. From 
Carlyle Froude went to Goethe, then almost un- 
known at Oxford, a true philosopher as well as a 
great poet, an example of dignity, a liberator of 
the human soul. 

The Church as a profession is not suitable to a 
man in Froude's state of mind. But in Oxford 
at that time there flourished a lamentable system 
which would have been felt to be irreligious if 
the authorities of the place had known what 
religion really was. Most Fellows lost their 
Fellowships in a very short time unless they took 
orders, and Froude's Fellowship was in that 
sense a clerical one. They were ordained as a 
matter of course, the Bishop requiring no other 
title. They were not expected, unless they wished 
it, to take any parochial duty, and the notion that 
they had a " serious call " to keep their Fellow- 



OXFORD 33 

ships can only be described as absurd. Froude 
had no other profession in view, and he persuaded 
himself that a^ Church established by law must 
allow a wider range of opinion than a voluntary 
communion could afford to tolerate. As we have 
seen, he had defended Tract Ninety, and he 
claimed for himself the latitude which he conceded 
to Newman. It was in his case a mistake, as he 
very soon discovered. But the system which 
encouraged it must bear a large part of the blame. 
Meanwhile he had been employed by Newman on 
an uncongenial task. After the discontinuance of 
Tracts for the Times, Newman projected another 
series, called Lives of the Saints. The idea was of 
course taken from the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum. 
But Newman had a definite polemical purpose. 
Just as he felt the force of Hume's argument 
against the probability of miracles, so he realised 
the difficulty of answering Gibbon's inquiry when 
miracles ceased. Had they ever ceased at all ? 
Many Roman Catholics, if not the most enlightened 
and instructed, thought not. Newman con- 
ceived that the lives of English and Irish saints 
held much matter for edification, including marvels 
and portents of various kinds. He desired that 
these things should be believed, as he doubtless 
believed them. They proved, he thought, if they 
could be proved themselves, that supernatural 
power resided in the Church, and when the 
Church was concerned he laid his reason aside. 
He was extraordinarily sanguine. " Rationalise," 

(3310) ry 



34 LIFE OF FROUDE 

he said to Froude, " when the evidence is weak, 
and this will give credibility for others, when you 
can show that the evidence is strong," Froude 
chose St. Neot, a contemporary of Alfred, in whose 
life the supernatural played a comparatively 
small part. He told his story as legend, not quite 
as Newman wanted it. " This is all/' he said at 
the end, " and perhaps rather more than all, that 
is known of the life of the blessed St. Neot." 
His connection with the series ceased. But 
his curiosity was excited. He read far and wide 
in the Benedictine biographies. No trace of 
investigation into facts could he discover. If a 
tale was edifying, it was believed, and credibility 
had nothing to do with it. The saints were 
beatified conjurers, and any nonsense about them 
was swallowed, if it involved the miraculous ele- 
ment. The effect upon Froude may be left to 
his own words. "St. Patrick I found once lighted 
a fire with icicles, changed a French marauder 
into a wolf, and floated to Ireland on an altar 
stone. I thought it nonsense. I found it even- 
tually uncertain whether Patricius was not a title, 
and whether any single apostle of that name had 
so much as existed." 

Froude' s scepticism was too indiscriminate when 
it assailed the existence of St. Patrick, which is 
not now doubted by scholars, baseless as the 
Patrician legends may be. Colgan's Lives of the 
Irish Saints had taken him back to Ireland, that 
he might examine the scenes described. He visited 



OXFORD 35 

them under the best guidance ; and Petre, the 
learned historian of the Round Towers, showed 
him a host of curious antiquities, including a 
utensil which liad come to be called the Crown 
of Brian Boru. Legendary history made no 
impression upon Froude. The actual state of 
Ireland affected him with the deepest interest. 
A population of eight millions, fed chiefly upon 
potatoes, and multiplying like rabbits, light- 
hearted, reckless, and generous, never grudged 
hospitality, nor troubled themselves about paying 
their debts. Their kindness to strangers was un- 
bounded. In the wilds of Mayo Froude caught the 
smallpox, and was nursed with a devotion which 
he always remembered, ungrateful as in some of 
his writings about Ireland he may seem. After 
his recovery he wandered about the coast, saw 
the station of Protestant missionaries at Achill, 
and was rowed out to Clare Island, where a dis- 
abled galleon from the Armada had been wrecked. 
His studies in hagiology led him to consider 
the whole question of the miraculous, and he 
found it impossible to work with Newman any 
more. A religion which rested upon such stories 
as Father Colgan's was a religion nurtured in 
lies. 

All this, however, had nothing to do with the 
Church of England by law established, and 
Froude was ordained deacon in 1845. The same 
year Newman seceded, and was received into the 
Church of Rome. No similar event, before or 



36 LIFE OF FROUDE 

since, has excited such consternation and alarm. 
So impartial an observer as Mr. Disraeli thought 
that the Church of England did not in his time 
recover from the blow. We are only concerned 
with it here as it affected Froude. It affected 
him in a way unknown outside the family. Hur- 
rell Froude, who abhorred private judgment as 
a Protestant error, had told his brothers that 
when they saw Newman and Keble disagree they 
might think for themselves. He felt sure that 
he was thereby guarding them against thinking 
for themselves at all. But now the event which 
he considered impossible had happened. Newman 
had gone to Rome. Keble remained faithful 
to the Church of his baptism. Which side Hurrell 
Froude would have taken nobody could say. He 
had died a clergyman of the Church of England 
at the age of thirty-three, nine years before. 
Anthony Froude had no inclination to follow 
Newman. But neither did he agree with Keble. 
He thought for himself. Of his brief clerical 
career there exists a singular record in the shape 
of a funeral sermon preached at St. Mary's 
Church, Torquay, on the second Sunday after 
Trinity, 1847. The subject was George May 
Coleridge, vicar of the parish, the poet's 
nephew, who had been cut off in the prime of 
life while Froude acted as his curate. The 
sermon itself is not remarkable, except for being 
written in unusually good English. The doctrine 
is strictly orthodox, and the simple life of a good 



OXFORD 37 

clergyman devoted to his people is described with 
much tenderness of feeling. 

This sermon,^ of which he gave a copy to John 
Duke Coleridge, the future Lord Chief Justice of 
England, was Froude's first experiment in author- 
ship, and it was at least harmless. As much 
cannot be said for the second, two anonymous 
stories, called Shadows of the Clouds and The 
Lieutenant's Daughter. The Lieutenant's Daughter 
has been long and deservedly forgotten. Shadows 
of the Clouds is a valuable piece of autobiography. 
Without literary merit, without any quality to 
attract the public, it gives a vivid and faithful 
account of the author's troubles at school and 
at home, together with a slight sketch of his 
unfortunate love-affair. 

Froude was a born story-teller, with an irre- 
sistible propensity for making books. The fas- 
cination which, throughout his life, he had for 
women showed itself almost before he was out of 
his teens ; and in this case the feeling was abun- 
dantly returned. Nevertheless he could, within 
a few years, publish the whole narrative, changing 
only the names, and then feel genuine surprise 
that the other person concerned should be pained. 
He was not inconsiderate. Those who lived 
with him never heard from him a rough or 
unkind word. But his dramatic instinct was 
uncontrollable and had to be expressed. The 
Archdeacon read the book, and was naturally 
furious. If he could have been in any way 



38 LIFE OF FROUDE 

convinced of his errors, which may be doubted, 
to pubHsh an account of them was not the best 
way to begin. ReconciHation had been made 
impossible, and Anthony was left to his own 
devices. His miscellaneous reading was not 
checked by an ordination which imposed no duties. 
Goethe sent him to Spinoza, a '* God-intoxicated 
man," and a philosophical genius, but not a pillar of 
ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Vestiges of Creation, which 
had appeared in 1844, woke Oxford to the dis- 
covery that physical science might have something 
to say about the origin, or at least the growth, of 
the universe. The writer, Robert Chambers, whose 
name was not then known, so far anticipated 
Darwin that he dispensed with the necessity for a 
special creation of each plant and animal. He did 
not, any more than Darwin, attack the Christian 
religion, and he did not really go much farther 
than Lucretius. But he had more modern lights, 
he understood science, and he wrote in a popular 
style. He made a lively impression upon Froude, 
who learnt from him that natural phaenomena 
were due to natural causes, at the same time that 
he acquired from Spinoza a disbelief in the free- 
dom of the will. When Dr. Johnson said, "Sir, 
we know that the will is free, and there's an end 
on't," he did not understand the question. We 
all know that the will is free to act. But is man 
free to will ? If everything about a man were 
within Qur cognisance, we could predict his con- 
duct in given circumstances as certainly as a 



OXFORD 39 

chemist can foretell the effect of mixing an acid 
with an alkali. I have no intention of express- 
ing any opinion of my own upon this subject. 
The important thing is that Froude became 
in the philosophic sense a Determinist, and 
his conviction that Calvin was in that re- 
spect the best philosopher among theologians 
strengthened his attachment to the Protestant 
cause. 

Protestantism apart, however, Fronde's posi- 
tion as a clergyman had become intolerable. He 
had been persuaded to accept ordination for the 
reason, among others, that the Church could be 
reformed better from within than from without. 
But there were few doctrines of the Church that 
he could honestly teach, and the straightforward 
course was to abandon the clerical profession. 
Nowadays a man in Fronde's plight would onty 
have to sign a paper, and he would be free. But 
before 1870 orders, even deacon's orders, were 
indelible. Neither a priest nor a deacon could sit 
in Parliament, or enter any other learned profes- 
sion. Froude was in great difficulty and distress. 
He consulted his friends Arthur Stanley, Matthew 
Arnold, and Arthur Clough. Clough, though a 
layman, felt the same perplexity as himself. 
As a Fellow and Tutor of Oriel he had signed the 
Articles. Now that he no longer believed in them, 
ought he not to give up his appointments ? The 
Provost, Dr. Hawkins, induced him to pause 
and reflect. Meanwhile he published a volume 



40 LIFE OF FROUDE 

of poetry, including the celebrated Bothie, about 
which Froude wrote to him : 

" I was for ever falling upon lines which gave 
me uneasy twitchings ; e.g. the end of the love 
scene : 

"And he fell at her feet, and buried his face in her 
a'pron. 

" I daresay the head would fall there, but 
what an image ! It chimes in with your notion 
of the attractiveness of the working business. 
But our undisciplined ears have divided the ideas 
too long to bear to have them so abruptly shaken 
together. Love is an idle sort of a god, and comes 
in other hours than the working ones ; at least I 
have always found it so. I don't think of it in 
my working time, and when I see a person I do 
love working (at whatever it may be), I have 
quite another set of thoughts about her. ... It 
would do excellently well for married affection, for 
it is the element in which it lives. But I don't 
think young love gets born then. I only speak for 
myself, and from a very limited experience. As to 
the story, I don't the least object to it on The 
Spectator's ground. I think it could not have been 
done in prose. Verse was wanted to give it dig- 
nity. But if we find it trivial, the fault is in our 
own varnished selves. We have been polished up 
so bright that we forget the stuff we are made of." 
Clough was in politics a Republican, and 
sympathised ardently with the French Revolution 
of 1848. So did Charles Kingsley, a Cambridge 



OXFORD 41 

man, who was at that time on a visit to Exeter. 
But Kingsle\^, though a disciple of Carlyle, was 
also a hard-working clergyman, who held that 
the masses could be regenerated by Christian 
Socialism. Froude had no faith in Socialism, 
nor in Christianity as the Church understood 
it. In this year, 1848, Emerson also came 
to Oxford, and dined with Clough at Oriel, 
where they thought him like Newman. Froude 
was already an admirer of Emerson's essays, 
and laid his case before the American moralist. 
Emerson gave him, as might have been expected, 
no practical advice, but recommended him to 
read the Vedas. Nothing mattered much to 
Emerson, who took the opportunity to give a 
lecture in London on the Spiritual Unity of all 
Animated Beings. Froude attended it, and there 
first saw Carlyle, who burst, characteristically 
enough, into a shout of laughter at the close. 
Carlyle loved Emerson ; but the Emersonian 
philosophy was to him like any other form of old 
clothes, only rather more grotesque than most. 

In the Long Vacation of 1848 Froude went 
alone to Ireland for the third time, and shut 
himself up at Killarney. From Killarney he 
wrote a long account of himself to Clough : 

"Killarney, July 15, 1848. 
" I came over here where for the present I am 
all day in the woods and on the lake and retire 
at night into an unpleasant hotel, where I am 



42 LIFE OF FROUDE 

sitting up writing this and waiting with the rest 
of the household rather anxiously for the arrival 
of a fresh wedded pair. Next week I move 
off across the lake to a sort of lodge of Lord Ken- 
mare, where I have persuaded an old lady to take 
me into the family. I am going to live with them, 
and I am going to have her ladyship's own boudoir 
to scribble in. It is a wild place enough with 
porridge and potatoes to eat, varied with what fish 
I may provide for myself and arbutus berries if it 
comes to starving. The noble lord has been away 
for some years. They will put a deal table into 
the said boudoir for me, and if living under a 
noble roof has charms for me I have that at least 
to console myself with. I can't tell about your 
coming. There may be a rising in September, and 
you may be tempted to turn rebel, you know ; and 
I don't know whether you like porridge, or whether 
a straw bed is to your — not ' taste,' touch is better, 
I suppose. It is perfectly beautiful here, or it 
v/ould be if it wasn't for the swarm of people about 
one that are for ever insisting on one's saying so. 
Between hotel-keeper and carmen and boatmen 
and guides that describe to my honour the scenery, 
and young girls that insist on my honour taking 
a taste of the goats' milk, and a thousand other 
creatures that insist on boring me and being paid 
for it, I am really thankful every night when I get 
to my room and find all the pieces of me safe in 
their places. However, I shall do very well when 
I get to my lodge, and in the meantime I am 



OXFORD 43 

contented to do ill. I have hopes of these young 
Paddies after all. I think they will have a fight 
for it, or else their landlords will bully the Govern- 
ment into strong measures as they call them — and 
then will finally disgust whatever there is left of 
doubtful loyalty in the country into open unloyalty, 
and they will win without fighting. There is the 
most genuine hatred of the Irish landlords every- 
where that I can remember to have heard expressed 
of persons or things. My landlady that is to be 
next week told me she believed it was God's doing. 
If God wished the people should be stirred up to 
fight, then it was all right they should do it ; and if 
Hedidn't will, why surely then there would be no 
fighting at all. I am not sure it could have been 
expressed better. I have heard horrid stories in 
detail of the famine. They are getting historical 
now, and the people can look back at them and tell 
them quietly. It is very lucky for us that we are 
let to get off for the most part with generalities, 
and the knowledge of details is left to those who 
suffer them. I think if it was not so we should 
all go mad or shoot ourselves. 

" The echoes of English politics which come over 
here are very sickening : even The Spectator exas- 
perates me with its d — d cold-water cure for all 
enthusiasm. When I see these beautiful mountain 
glens, I quite long to build myself a little den in 
the middle of them, and say good-bye to the world, 
with all its lies and its selfishness, till other times. 
I have still one great consolation here, and that 



44 LIFE OF FROUDE 

is the rage and fury of the sqireens at the poor 
rates ; six and sixpence in the pound with an 
estate mortgaged right up to high-water mark 
and the year's income anticipated is not the very 
most delightful prospect possible. 

" The crows are very fat and very plenty. They 
sit on the roadside and look at you with a kind of 
right of property. There are no beggars — at least, 
professional ones. Thej^ were all star ved-dead, gone 
where at least I suppose the means of subsistence 
will be found for them. There is no begging 
or starving, I believe, in the two divisions of 
Kingdom Come. I see in The Spectator the 
undergraduates were energetically loyal at Com- 
memoration — nice boys — and the dons have been 
snubbed about Guizot. Is there a chance for 

M ? Poor fellow, he is craving to be married, 

and ceteris paribus I suppose humanity allows it 
to be a claim, though John Mill doesn't. My 
wedding party have not arrived. It is impossible 
not to feel a kindly interest in them. At the 
bottom of all the agitation a wedding sets going 
in us all there is lying, I think a kind of mis- 
giving, a secret pity for the fate of the poor rose 
which is picked now and must forthwith wither ; 
and our boisterous jollification is but an awkward 
barely successful effort at concealing it Well, 
good-bye. I hardly know when I look over these 
pages whether to wish you to get them or not. 
" Yours notwithstanding, 

"J. A. F." 



OXFORD 45 

Ireland had been devastated, far more than 
decimated, by the famine, and was simmering 
with insurrection, Hke the Continent of Europe. 
The Corn Laws had gone, and the Whigs were 
back in office, but they could do nothing with 
Ireland, To Froude it appeared as if the dis- 
turbed state of the country were an emblem of 
distracted Churches and outworn creeds. Re- 
ligion seemed to him hopelessly damaged, and 
he asked himself whether morality would not 
follow religion. If the Christian sanction were 
lost, would the difference between right and 
wrong survive ? His own state of mind was 
thoroughly wretched. The creed in which he 
had been brought up was giving way under him, 
and he could find no principle of action at all. 
Brooding ceaselessly over these problems, he at 
the same time lowered his physical strength by 
abstinence, living upon bread, milk, and vege- 
tables, giving up meat and wine. In this un- 
promising frame of mind, and in the course 
of solitary rambles, he composed The Nemesis 
of Faith} The book is, both in substance and 
in style, quite unworthy of Froude. But in 
the life of a man who afterwards wrote what the 
world would not willingly let die it is an epoch 
of critical importance. To describe it in a word 
is impossible. To describe it in a few words is 
not easy. Froude himself called it in after life 
a "cry of pain," meaning that it was intended 

^ Chapman, 1849. 



46 LIFE OF FROUDE 

to relieve the intolerable pressure of his thoughts. 
It is not a novel, it is not a treatise, it is not 
poetry, it is not romance. It is the delineation 
of a mood ; and though it was called, with some 
reason, sceptical, its moral, if it has a moral, is 
that scepticism leads to misconduct. That un- 
pleasant and unverified hypothesis, soon rejected 
by Froude himself, has been revived by M. Bourget 
in Le Disciple^ and UEtape. The Nemesis of 
Faith is as unwholesome as either of these books, 
and has not their literary charm. It had few 
friends, because it disgusted free-thinking Liberals 
as much as it scandalised orthodox Conservatives. 
If it were read at all nowadays, as it is not, it 
would be read for the early sketches of Newman 
and Carlyle, afterwards amplified in memorable 
pages which are not likely to perish. 

In a letter to Charles Kingsley, written from 
Dartington on New Year's Day, 1849, Froude 
speaks with transparent candour of his book, and 
of his own mind: 

" I wish to give up my Fellowship. I hate the 
Articles. I have said I hate chapel to the Rector 
himself ; and then I must live somehow, and 
England is not hospitable, and the parties here 
to whom I am in submission believe too devoutly 
in the God of this world to forgive an absolute 
apostasy. Under pain of lost favour for ever 
if I leave my provision at Oxford, I must find 
another, and immediately. There are many 
matters I wish to talk over with you. I have a 



OXFORD 47 

book advertised. You may have seen it. It is 
too utterly subjective to please you. I can't help 
it. If the cre^atures breed, they must come to 
the birth. There is something in the thing, I 
know ; for I cut a hole in my heart, and wrote 
with the blood. I wouldn't write such another 
at the cost of the same pain for anything short 
of direct promotion into heaven." 

Of Kingsley himself Froude wrote ^ to another 
clerical friend, friend of a lifetime, Cowley 
Powles : " Kingsley is such a fine fellow — I 
almost wish, though, he wouldn't write and talk 
Chartism, and be always in such a stringent ex- 
citement about it all. He dreams of nothing but 
barricades and provisional Governments and grand 
Smithfield bonfires, where the landlords are all 
roasting in the fat of their own prize oxen. He 
is so musical and beautiful in poetry, and so 
rough and harsh in prose, and he doesn't know 
the least that it is because in the first the art 
is carrying him out of himself, and making him 
forget just for a little that the age is so entirely 
out of joint." A very fine and discriminating 
piece of criticism. 

The immediate effect of The Nemesis, the only 
effect it ever had, was disastrous. Whatever else 
it might be, it was undoubtedly heretical, and 
in the Oxford of 1849 heresy was the unpardonable 
sin. The Senior Tutor of Exeter, the Reverend 
William Sewell, burnt the book during a lecture 

' April loth, 1849. 



48 LIFE OF FROUDE 

in the College Hall. Sewell^ afterwards founder 
and first Warden of Radley, was a didactic Church- 
man, always talking or writing, seldom thinking, 
who contributed popular articles to The Quarterly 
Review. The editor, Lockhart, knew their value 
well enough. They tell one nothing, he said, 
they mean nothing, they are nothing, but they 
go down like bottled velvet. Sewell's eccen- 
tricities could not hurt Froude. But more serious 
consequences followed. The Governing Body of 
Exeter, the Rector^ and Fellows, called upon 
him to resign his Fellowship. This they had 
no moral right to do, and Froude should have 
rejected the demand. For though his name 
and college were on the title-page of the book, 
the book itself was a work of fiction, and he 
could not justly be held responsible for the 
opinions of the characters. Expulsion was, 
however, held out to him as the alternative of 
resignation. 

** If the Rector will permit me," he wrote 
from Oxford to Clough, " to-morrow I cease to 
be a Fellow of the College. But there is a 
doubt if he will permit it, and will not rather try 
to send me out in true heretic style. My book 
is therefore, as you may suppose, out. I know 
little of what is said, but it sells fast, and is being 
read, and is producing sorrow this time, I under- 
stand, as much as anger, but the two feelings 
will speedily unite." 

' Dr. Richards. 



OXFORD 49 

If he could have appealed to a court of law, 
the authorities would probably have failed for 
want of evidence, and Froude would have re- 
tained his Fellowship. But he was sensitive, 
and yielded to pressure. He signed the paper 
presented to him as if he had been a criminal, 
and shook the dust of the University from his feet. 
Within ten years a new Rector, quite as orthodox 
as the old, had invited him to replace his name on 
the books of the college. It was long, however, 
before he returned to an Oxford where only the 
buildings were the same. Twenty years from 
this date an atheistic treatise might have been 
written with perfect impunity by any Fellow of 
any college. Nobody would even have read it if 
atheism had been its only recommendation. The 
wise indifference of the wise had relieved true 
religion from the paralysis of official patronage. 
But in 1849 the action of the Rector and Fellows 
was heartily applauded by the Visitor, Bishop 
Phillpotts, the famous Henry of Exeter. Their 
behaviour was conscientious, and Dr. Richards, 
the Rector, was a model of dignified urbanity. It 
is unreasonable to blame men for not being in 
advance of their age. 



(3310) 



CHAPTER III 

LIBERTY 

FROUDE'S position was now, from a woildly 
point of view, deplorable. For the antagon- 
ism of High Churchmen he was of course prepared. 
" Never mind/' he wrote to Clough of The Nemesis, 
" if the Puseyites hate it ; they must fear it, and 
it will work in the mind they have made sick." 
But he was also assailed in the Protestant press 
as an awful example of what the Oxford Move- 
ment might engender. His book was denounced 
on all sides, even by freethinkers, who regarded it 
as a reproach to their cause. The professors of 
University College, London, had appointed him to 
a mastership at Hobart Town in Australia, for 
which he applied the year before in the hope 
that change of scene might help to re-settle his 
mind. On reading the attacks in the newspapers 
they pusillanimously asked him to withdraw, and 
he withdrew. A letter to Clough, dated the 6th of 
March, 1849, explains his intellectual and material 
position at this time in a vivid and striking manner. 
" I admire Matt, to a very great extent, only I 
don't see what business he has to parade his calm- 
ness, and lecture us on resignation, when he has 

so 



LIBERTY 51 

never known what a storm is, and doesn't know 
what to resign himself to. I think he only knows 
the shady side o^ nature out of books. Still I think 
his versifying, and generally his aesthetic power 
is quite wonderful. ... On the whole he shapes 
better than you^ I think, but you have marble 
to cut out, and he has only clay. ... Do you 
think that if the Council do ask me to give up I 
might fairly ask Lord Brougham as their President 
to get me helped instead to ever so poor an honest 
living in the Colonies ? I can't turn hack writer, 
and I must have something fixed to do. Congreve 
is down-hearted about Oxford : not so I. I quite 
look to coming back in a very few years." 

The Archdeacon, conceiving that the best remedy 
for free thought was short commons, stopped his 
son's allowance. Froude would have been alone in 
the world, if the brave and generous Kingsley had 
not come to his assistance. Like a true Christian, 
he invited Froude to his house, and made him at 
home there. To appreciate the magnanimity of this 
offer we must consider that Kinglsey was himself 
suspected of being a heretic, and that his prominent 
association with Froude brought him letters of 
remonstrance by every post. He said nothing 
about them, and Froude, in perfect ignorance of 
what he was inflicting upon his host, stayed two 
months with him at Ilfracombe and Lynmouth. 
Yet Kingsley did not, and could not, agree with 
Froude. He was a resolved, serious Christian, 
and never dreamt of giving up his ministry. He 



52 LIFE OF FROUDE 

did not in the least agree with Froude, who 
made no impression upon him in argument. He 
acted from kindness, and respect for integrity. 

Froude, however, could not stay permanently 
with the Kingsleys. His father would have 
nothing to do with him, and in his son's opinion 
was right to leave him with the consequences 
of his own errors. But the outcry against him 
had been so violent and excessive as to provoke 
a reaction. Froude might be an " infidel," he 
was not a criminal, and in resigning his Fellow- 
ship he had shown more honesty than prudence. 
His position excited the sympathy of influential 
persons. Crabb Robinson, though an entire 
stranger to him, wrote a public protest against 
Froude' s treatment. Other men, not less distin- 
guished, went farther. Chevalier Bunsen, the 
Prussian Minister, Monckton Milnes, afterwards 
Lord Houghton, and others whose names he 
never knew, subscribed a considerable sum of 
money for maintaining the unpopular writer at 
a German university while he made a serious 
study of theological science. But he had had 
enough of theology, and the munificent offer was 
declined, though Bunsen harangued him enthusi- 
astically for five hours in Carlton Gardens on 
the exquisite adaptation of Evangehcal doctrines 
to the human soul, until Froude began to sus- 
pect that they must have originated in the 
soul itself. 

At this time a greater change than the loss of 



LIBERTY 53 

his Fellowship came upon Froude. While stay- 
ing with the Kingsleys at Ilfracombe, he met 
Mrs. Kingsley's sister, Charlotte Grenfell, the 
Argemone of Yeasty a lady of somewhat wilful, 
yet most brilliant spirit, with a small fortune of 
her own. Miss Grenfell had joined the Church 
of Rome two years before, and at that time 
thought of entering a convent. This idea was 
extremely distasteful to her sister and her sister's 
husband. Their favourite remedy for feminine 
caprice was marriage, and they soon had the satis- 
faction of seeing Miss Grenfell become Mrs. Froude. 
There were some difficulties in the way, for 
Froude' s prospects were by no means assured, 
and Mrs. Kingsley felt occasional scruples. But 
Froude had confidence in himself, and when his 
mind was made up he would not look back. 

" You remember," he wrote to Mrs. Kingsley, 
in 1849, " I warned you that I intended to take 
my own way in life, doing (as I always have done) 
in all important matters just what I should think 
good, at whatever risk of consequences, and taking 
no other person's opinion when it crossed with 
my own. Now in this matter I feel certain that 
the way to save Charlotte most pain is to shorten 
the struggle, and that will be best done by being 
short, peremptory, and decided in allowing no 
dictation and no interference. . . . Charlotte her- 
self is really magnificent. Every letter shows 
me larger nobleness of heart. You cannot go 
back now, Mrs. Kingsley." 



54 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Mrs. Kingsley did not go back, and Froude 
had his way. Before the wedding, however, 
another and a novel experience awaited him. 
His misfortunes aroused the interest of a rich 
manufacturer at Manchester, Mr. Darbishire, who 
offered him a resident tutorship, and would 
have taken him into his own firm, even, as it 
would seem, into his own family, if he had 
desired to become a man of business, and to 
live in a smoky town. But Froude was en- 
gaged to be married, and had a passionate love 
of the country. His keen, clear, rapid intelli- 
gence would probably have served him well 
in commercial affairs when once he had learnt 
to understand them. He was reserved for a 
very different destiny, and he gratefully declined 
Mr. Darbishire's offer. Nevertheless, his stay 
at Manchester as private tutor had some share 
in his mental development. He made acquaint- 
ance with interesting persons, such as Harriet 
Martineau, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Gaskell, 
and William Edward Forster, then known as a 
young Quaker who had devoted himself, in the 
true Quaker spirit of self-sacrifice, to relieving 
the sufferers from the Irish famine. Besides 
Manchester friends, Froude imbibed Manchester 
principles. He had been half inclined to sym- 
pathise with the socialism of Louis Blanc and 
other French revolutionists. Manchester cured 
him. He adopted the creed of individualism, 
private enterprise, no interference by Government, 



LIBERTY 55 

and free trade. In these matters he did not, at that 
time, go with Carlyle, as in ecclesiastical matters 
he had not §one with Newman. His mind was 
intensely practical, though in personal questions 
of self-interest he was careless, and even indifferent. 
Henceforth he abandoned speculation, as well 
philosophical as theological, and reverted to the 
historical studies of his youth. Philosophy at 
Oxford in those days meant Plato, Aristotle, and 
Bishop Butler. Froude was a good Greek scholar, 
and he had the true Oxford reverence for Butler. 
But he had not gone deeper into philosophy than 
his examinations and his pupils required. He 
liked positive results, and metaphysicians always 
suggested to him the movements of a squirrel 
in a cage. 

The alternative to business was literature. 
Biographies of literary men, said Carlyle, are the 
most wretched documents in human history, 
except the Newgate Calendar. But Carlyle said 
many things he did not believe, and this was 
probably one of them. The truth is, that the 
literary profession, like the commercial, requires 
some little capital with which to set out, and 
Froude received this with his wife. Besides it 
he had brilliant talents, unflagging industry, and 
powers of writing such as have seldom been given 
to any of the sons of men. While at Manchester 
he composed The Cat's Pilgrimage, the earliest 
of his Short Studies in date. The moral of this 
fanciful fable is very like the moral of Candide. 



56 LIFE OF FROUDE 

The discontented cat, tired of her monotonously 
comfortable place on the hearthrug, goes out into 
the world, and gets nothing more than experience 
for her pains. She finds the other animals occupied 
with their own concerns, and enjoying life because 
they do not go beyond them. Not a very elevating 
paper, perhaps, but better than The Nemesis of 
Faith, and Froude's last word on the subjects 
that had tormented his youth. 

He recoiled from materialism, finding that it 
offered no explanation of the universe. Faith 
in God he had never entirely lost, and on that he 
founded his henceforth unshaken belief in the 
providential government of the world. What- 
ever might be the origin of the Christian religion, 
it furnished the best guide of life ; and spiritual 
truth, as Bunsen said, was independent of history. 
He had no sort of sympathy with those who 
rejected belief in Christianity altogether, still 
less with those who abandoned Theism. Although 
he could not be a minister of the Church, he was 
content to be a member, understanding the Church 
to be what he was brought up to think it, the 
national organ of religion, a Protestant, evan- 
gelical establishment under the authority of the 
law and the supremacy of the Crown. 

Froude returned to Manchester immediately 
after his marriage, but his wife did not hke 
the place nor the people. They looked about 
for a country home, and were fortunate enough 
to find the most enchanting spot in North Wales. 



LIBERTY 57 

Plas Gwynant, the shining place, stands on a 
rising ground surrounded by woods, at the foot 
of Snowdon, between Capel Curig and Beddgelert. 
Beyond the lawn and meadow is Dinas Lake. A 
cherry orchard stood close to the house door, and 
a torrent poured through a rocky ravine in the 
grounds, falling into a pool below. A mile up the 
valley was the glittering lake, Lyn Gwynant, with 
a boat and plenty of fishing. Good shooting 
was also within reach. 

To this ideal home Froude came with his wife 
in the summer of 1850. Here began a new life 
of cloudless happiness and perfect peace. His 
spiritual difficulties fell away from him, and he 
found that the Church in which he had been born 
was comprehensive enough for him, as for others. 
He was not called upon to solve problems which 
had baffled the subtlest intellects, and would baffle 
them till the end of time. Religion could be made 
practical, and not until its practical lessons had 
been exhausted was it necessary to go farther 
afield. " Do the duty that lies nearest you," 
said Goethe, who knew art and science, hterature 
and life, as few men have known them. Froude 
was never idle, and never at a loss for amusement. 
Although he wrote regularly, and his love of 
reading was a passion, he had the keenest enjoy- 
ment of sport and expeditions, of country air and 
sights and sounds, of natural beauty and physical 
exercise. It was impossible to be dull in his 
company, for he was the prince of conversers, 



58 LIFE OF FROUDE 

drawing out as much as he gave. No wonder that 
there were numerous visitors at Plas Gwynant. 
He was the best and warmest of friends. In 
London he would always lay aside his work 
for the day to entertain one of his contemporaries 
at Oxford, and at Plas Gwynant they found 
a hospitable welcome. He would fish with 
them, or shoot with them, or boat with them, or 
walk with them, discussing every subject under 
heaven. Perhaps the most valued of his guests 
was Clough, who had then written most of his 
poetry, and projected new enterprises, not knowing 
how short his life would be. 

Besides Clough, Matthew Arnold came to 
Plas Gwynant, and Charles Kingsley, and John 
Conington, the Oxford Professor of Latin, and 
Max Miiller, the great philologist. A letter to 
MaxMiiller, dated the 25th of June, 1851, gives a 
pleasant picture of existence there. 

" I shall be so glad to see you in July. Come 
and stay as long as work will let you, and you can 
endure our hospitality. We are poor, and so 
are not living at a high rate. I can't give you 
any wine, because I haven't a drop in the house, 
and you must bring your own cigars, as I am come 
down to pipes. But to set against that, you shall 
have the best dinner in Wales every day — fresh 
trout, Welsh mutton, as much bitter ale as you 
can drink ; a bedroom and a little sitting-room 
joining it all for your own self, and the most 
beautiful look-out from the window that I have 



LIBERTY 59 

ever seen. You may vary your retirement. You 
may change your rooms for the flower-garden, 
which is an island in the river, or for the edge of 
the waterfall, the music of which will every night 
lull you to sleep. Last of all, you will have the 
society of myself, and of my wife, and, what ought 
to weigh with you too, you will give us the great 
pleasure of yours." 

Clough neither fished, nor shot, nor boated, 
but as a walking companion there was no one, 
in Froade's opinion, to be put above him. For 
fishing he gave pre-eminence to Kingsley, and 
together they carried up their coracles to waters 
higher than ordinary boats could reach. Kingsley 
was ardent in all forms of sport, and an enthusiast 
for Maurician theology, holding, as he said, that 
it had pleased God to show him and Maurice 
things which He had concealed from Carlyle. 
He had concealed them also from Froude, who 
regarded Carlyle as his teacher, feeling that he 
owed him his emancipation from clerical bonds. 

Froude and Kingsley did not agree either in 
theology or in politics. " I meant to say," Froude 
wrote to his wife's brother-in-law in 1851, " that 
the philosophical necessity of the Incarnation 
as a fact must haye been as cogent to the earliest 
thinkers as to ourselves. If we may say it must 
have been, they might say so. And they might, 
and indeed must, have concluded, each at their 
several date, that the highest historical person 
known to them must have been the Incarnate 



6o LIFE OF FROUDE 

God ; so that unless the Incarnation was the first 
fact in human history, there must have been a 
time when they would have used the argument 
and it would have led them wrong." 

Concerning Kingsley's Socialism, especially as 
shown in Hypatia, Froude was cold and critical. 
** It is by no means as yet clear to me/' he wrote 
about this time, " that all good people are Social- 
ists, and that therefore whoever sticks to the old 
thing is a bad fellow. Whatever is has no end 
of claims on us. I have no doubt that we could 
not get on without the devil. If it had not been 
so, he would not have been. The ideas must be 
content to fight a long time before they assimilate 
all the wholesome flesh in the universe, and we 
cannot leave what works somehow for what only 
promises to work, and has yet by no means largely 
realised that promise. I consider it a bad sign 
in the thinkers among the Christian Socialists if 
they set to cursing those who don't agree with 
them. The multitudes must, but the thinkers 
should not. I cannot beheve that if Clement of 
Alexandria had been asked whether he candidly 
believed Tacitus was damned because he was a 
heathen he would have said * Yes.' Indeed, on 
indi'fferent matters (supposing he had been alive 
in Tacitus' s time), I don't think he would have 
minded writing a leader in the Acta Diurna, 
even though Tacitus followed on the other 
side ! " 

Oxford, and its old clothes, Froude had cast 



LIBERTY 6i 

behind him. He had never taken priest's orders, 
and the clerical disabilities imposed upon him 
were not only cruel, but ridiculous. Shut out from 
the law, he turned to literature, and became a 
regular reviewer. There was not so much re- 
viewing then as there is now, but it was better 
paid. His services were soon in great request, 
for he wrote an incomparable style. 

The origin of Froude's style is not obscure. 
Too original to be an imitator, he was in his 
handling of English an apt pupil of Newman. 
There is the same ease, the same grace, the same 
lightness of elastic strength. Froude, like New- 
man, can pass from racy, colloquial vernacular, 
the talk of educated men who understand each 
other, to heights of genuine eloquence, where the 
resources of our grand old English tongue are 
drawn out to the full. His vocabulary was large 
and various. He was familiar with every device 
of rhetoric. He could play with every pipe in 
the language, and sound what stop he pleased. 
Oxford men used to talk very much in those days, 
and have talked more or less ever since, about the 
Oriel style. Perhaps the best example of it is 
Church, the accomplished Dean oi St. Paul's. 
Church does not rival Newman and Froude at their 
best. But he never, as they sometimes do, falls 
into loose and slipshod writing. He was the fine 
flower of the old Oxford education, growing in 
hedged gardens, sheltered from the winds of 
heaven, such as Catullus painted in everlasting 



62 LIFE OF FROUDE 

colours long centuries ago. Froude was a man 
of the world, who knew the classics, and the minds 
of men, and cities, and governments, and the 
various races which make up the medley of the 
universe. He wrote for the multitude who read 
books for relaxation, who want to have their facts 
clearly stated, and their thinking done for them. 
He satisfied all their requirements, and yet he 
expressed himself with the natural eloquence of 
a fastidious scholar. Lucky indeed were the 
editors who could obtain the services of such a 
reviewer, and he was fortunate in being able to 
recommend with power the poetry of his friend, 
Matthew Arnold.^ 

Although Froude enjoyed with avidity the 
conversation of his chosen friends, he was not 
satisfied with intellectual epicureanism. He was 
resolved to make for himself a name, to leave 
behind him some not unworthy memorial. The 
history of the Reformation attracted him strongly. 
If an historian is a man of science, or a mere 
chronicler, then certainly Froude was not an his- 
torian. He made no claim to be impartial. He 
held that the Oxford Movement was not only 
endangering the National Church, but injuring 
the national character and corrupting men's 
knowledge of the past. He believed in the Re- 
formation first as an historic fact, and secondly 

• His recommendation was entirely sincere. "Ma.tt. A.' s Sohrab 
and Rustum," he wrote to Clough, "is to my taste all but 
perfect." 



LIBERTY 63 

as a beneficent revolt of the laity against clerical 
dominion. He denied that since the Reformation 
there had been one Catholic Church, and as an 
Englishman he asserted in the language of the 
Articles that tlie Bishop of Rome had no juris- 
diction within this realm of England. He wanted 
to vindicate the reformers, and to prove that in 
the struggle against Papal Supremacy English 
patriots took the side of the king. He was roused 
to indignation by slanders against the character 
of Elizabeth ; and he held, as almost every one 
now holds, that the attempt to make an innocent 
saint of Mary Stuart was futile. Even More and 
Fisher he refused to accept as candidates for the 
crown of martyrdom. They were both excellent 
men. More was, in some respects, a great man. 
They were certainly far more virtuous than the king 
who put them to death. But they were executed 
for treason, not for heresy, and to clear their 
memory it is necessary to show that they had no 
part in conspiring with a foreign Power against 
their lawful sovereign. That Power, the Church 
of Rome, a Power till 1870, Froude cordially 
hated. He regarded it as an obstacle to progress, 
an enemy of freedom, an enslaver of the intellect 
and the soul. The English Catholics of his own 
time were mild, honourable, and loyal. Although 
they had been relieved of their disabilities, they 
had no power. Froude' s reading and reflection led 
him to infer that when the Church was powerful 
it aimed a deadly blow at English independence. 



64 LIFE OF FROUDE 

and that Henry VII I., with all his moral failings, 
was entitled to the credit of averting it. These 
opinions were not new. They were held by most 
people when Froude was a boy. It was from 
Oxford that an attack upon them came, and 
from Oxford came also, in the person of Froude, 
their champion. 

Froude' s historical work took at first the form 
of essays, chiefly in The Westminster Review and 
Eraser's Magazine. The Rolls Series of State 
Papers had not then begun, and the reign of Henry 
was imperfectly understood. Froude was espe- 
cially attracted by the age of Elizabeth, who 
admired her father as a monarch, whatever she 
may have thought of him as a man. It was 
an age of mighty dramatists, of divine poets, of 
statesmen wise and magnanimous, if not great, 
of seamen who made England, not Spain, the 
ruler of the seas. It was with the seamen that 
Froude began. His essay on England's E or gotten 
Worthies, which appeared in The Westminster 
Review for 1852, was suggested by a new, and 
very bad, edition of Hakluyt. It inspired Kings- 
ley with the idea of his historical novel. Westward 
Ho ! and Tennyson drew from it, many years 
later, the story of his noble poem, The Revenge. 
The eloquence is splendid, and the patriotic fervour 
stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. The 
cruelties of the Spaniards in South America, 
perpetrated in the name of Holy Church, are 
described with unflinching fidelity and unsparing 



LIBERTY 65 

truth. For instance^ four hundred French Hugue- 
nots were massacred in cold blood by Spaniards, 
who invaded their settlement in Florida at a time 
when France was at peace with Spain. These 
Protestants w(5re flayed alive, and, to show that 
it was done in the cause of religion, an inscription 
was suspended over their bodies, " Not as French- 
men, but as heretics." Even at this distance of 
time it is satisfactory to reflect that these defenders 
of the faith were not left to the slow judgment of 
God. A French privateer, Dominique de Gourges, 
whose name deserves to be held in honour and 
remembrance, sailed from Rochelle, collected a 
body of American Indians, swooped down upon 
the Spanish forts, and hanged their pious inmates, 
wretches not less guilty than the authors of St. 
Bartholomew, with the appropriate legend, " Not 
as Spaniards, but as murderers." " It was at 
such a time," says Froude, ** and to take their 
part amidst such scenes as these, that the English 
navigators appeared along the shores of South 
America as the armed soldiers of the Reformation, 
and as the avengers of humanity." Hawkins, 
Drake, Raleigh, Davis, Grenville, are bright names 
in the annals of British seamanship. But they 
were not merely staunch patriots, and loyal 
subjects of the great Queen ; they were pioneers 
of civil and religious freedom from the most 
grievous yoke and most intolerable bondage 
that had ever oppressed mankind. 

In The Westminster for 1853 appeared Froude's 
(2310) ^ 



66 LIFE OF FROUDE 

essay on the Book of Job, which may be taken 
as his final expression of theological belief. Hence- 
forward he turned from theology to history, from 
speculation to fact. Even his friendship for 
Frederic Maurice could not rouse him to any 
great interest in the latter' s expulsion from King's 
College. ^^As thinkers/' he wrote to Clough on 
the 22nd of November, 1853, " Maurice, and still 
more the Mauricians, appear to me the most 
hopelessly imbecile that any section of the world 
have been driven to believe in. I am glad you 
liked Job, though my writing it was a mere 
accident, and I am not likely to do more of the 
kind. I am going to stick to the History in spite 
of your discouragement, and I believe I shall 
make something of it. At any rate one has sub- 
stantial stuff between one's fingers to be moulding 
at, and not those slime and sea sand ladders to 
the moon ' opinion.' " 

Froude pursued his studies, reading all the 
collections of original documents in Strype and 
other chroniclers. Why, he asked himself 
should Henry, this bloody and ferocious tyrant, 
have been so popular in his own lifetime ? 
Parliament, judges, juries, all the articulate 
classes of the community, why had they stood 
by him ? No doubt he could dissolve Parlia- 
ment, and dismiss the judges. But to sub- 
mit without a struggle, without even protest 
or remonstrance, was not like Englishmen, before 
or since. When Erasmus visited England he 



LIBERTY 67 

found that the laity were the best read and the 
best behaved in Europe, while the clergy were 
gluttonous, profligate, and avaricious. No his- 
torian ever prepared himself more thoroughly 
for his task than Froude. Sir Francis Palgrave, 
the Deputy Keeper of the Records under Sir John 
Romilly, offered to let him see the unpublished 
documents in the Chapter House at Westminster 
which dealt with the later years of Wolsey's 
Government, and to the action of Parliament after 
the Cardinal's fall. He examined them thoroughly, 
and accepted Parker's proposal that he should 
write the history of the period. But he had to 
leave Plas Gwynant. The London Library, which 
Carlyle had founded, sufficed for contributions 
to magazines. History was a more serious affair, 
and it was necessary for him to be, if not in London, 
at least near a railway. He returned to his native 
county, and took a house at Babbicombe, from 
which, after three years, he moved to Bideford. 
He made frequent visits to London, where he was 
the guest of his publisher, John Parker, at whose 
table he met Arthur Helps, John and Richard 
Doyle, Cornewall Lewis, Richard Trench, then 
Dean of Westminster, and Henry Thomas Buckle, 
once famous as a scientific historian. He called 
on the Carlyles at their house in Chelsea, and 
began an intimacy only broken by death. Carlyle 
himself was an excellent adviser in Froude' s 
peculiar field. He had the same Puritan leanings, 
the same sympathy with the Reformation, the 



68 LIFE OF FROUDE 

same hostility to ecclesiastical interference with 
secular affairs, unless, as in the case of John Knox, 
the interference was directed against Rome. 
Froude considered him not unlike Knox in humour, 
keenness of intellect, integrity, and daring. His- 
tory was the one form of literature outside Goethe 
and Burns for which he really cared. He had 
translated Wilhelm Meister in 1824, and it was 
probably at his suggestion that Froude translated 
Elective Affinities for Bohn's Library in 1850. 
Scottish history and Scottish character Carlyle 
knew as he knew his Bible. His assistance and 
encouragement, which were freely given, proved 
invaluable to Froude. 

Froude settled steadily down to work, dividing 
his time between London and Devonshire. Shoot- 
ing and fishing had for the time to be dropped. 
For recreation he joined an archery club, where, 
as James Spedding told him, you were always sure 
of your game. In after life Froude, who never bore 
malice, used to say that his father had been right in 
leaving him to his own resources, and that the 
necessity of providing for himself was, in his in- 
stance, as in so many others, the foundation of his 
career. He owed much to his publisher, John 
Parker, who was liberal, generous, and confiding. 
Publishers, like mothers-in-law, have got a bad 
name from bad jokes. Parker, by trusting Froude, 
and relieving him from anxiety while he wrote, 
smoothed the way for a memorable contribution 
to English history which after many vicissitudes 



LIBERTY 69 

has now an established place as a work of genius 
and research. 

The principles on which he worked are explained 
in a contribution to the volume of Oxford Essays 
for the year' 1855. The subject of this brilliant 
though forgotten paper is the best means of 
teaching English history, and the author's judg- 
ments upon modern historians are peculiar. Hume 
and Hallam, the latter of whom was still living, 
are indiscriminately condemned. Macaulay, 
whose first two volumes were already famous, 
is ignored. The Oxford examiners are severely 
censured for prescribing Campbell's Lives of the 
Chancellors as authoritative, and Carlyle's Crom- 
well, a collection of materials rather than a book, 
is pronounced to be the one good modern history, 
though Froude denounces, with friendly candour, 
Carlyle's " distempered antagonism to the pre- 
vailing fashions of the age." The most charac- 
teristic part of this essay, however, is that which 
recommends the Statutes, with their preambles, 
as the best text-book, and the following passage 
would be confidently assigned by most critics 
to the History itself : 

" Who now questions, to mention an extreme 
instance, that Anne Boleyn's death was the result 
of the licentious caprice of Henry ? and yet her 
own father, the Earl of Wiltshire, her uncle, the 
Duke of Norfolk, the hero of Flodden Field, the 
Privy Council, the House of Lords, the Arch- 
bishop and Bishops, the House of Commons, the 



70 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Grand Jury of Middlesex, and three other juries, 
assented without, as far as we know, an opposing 
voice, to the proofs of her guilt, and approved of 
the execution of the sentence against her." 

Froude was not, however, so much absorbed in 
the work of his life that he could not form and 
express strong opinions upon the great events 
passing around him. His view of the Russian 
war and of the French alliance was set forth with 
much plainness of speech in a letter to Max 
Miiller^ : 

" I felt in the autumn (and you were angry at 
me for saying so) that the very worst thing which 
could happen for Europe would be the success 
of the policy with which France and England 
were managing things. Happily the gods were 
against it too, as now, after having between us 
wasted sixty millions of money and fifty thousand 
human lives, we are beginning to discover. But 
I have no hope that things will go right, or that 
men will think reasonably, until they have first 
exhausted every mode of human folly. I still 
think Louis Napoleon the d — d'est rascal in 
Europe (for which again you will be angry with 
me), and that his reception the other day in 
London will hereafter appear in history as simply 
the most shameful episode in the English annals. 
Thinking this, you will not consider my opinion 
good for anything, and therefore I need not inflict 
it upon you. Humbugs, however, will explode 

' April 30th, 1855. 



LIBERTY 71 

in the present state of the atmosphere^ and the 
Austrian humbug, for instance, is at last, God be 
praised for it, exploding. John Bull, I suppose, 
will work himself into a fine fever about that ; 
but he will tl;iink none the worse of the old ladies 
in Downing Street who are made fools of : and 
will be none the better disposed to listen to people 
who told him all along how it would be. How- 
ever, in the penal fatuity which has taken pos- 
session of our big bow-wow people, and in even 
the general folly, I see great ground for comfort 
to quiet people like myself ; and if I live fifteen 
years, I still hope I shall see a Republic among us." 
Fronde's Republicanism did not last. His 
opinion of Louis Napoleon never altered. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE HISTORY 

** T T has not yet become superfluous to insist/' 
1 said the Regius Professor of Modern 
History in the University of Cambridge on 
the 26th of January, 1903-^" that history is a 
science, no less and no more." If this view is 
correct and exhaustive, Froude was no historian. 
He must remain outside the pale in the company 
of Thucydides, Tacitus, Gibbon, Macaulay, 
and Mommsen. Among literary historians, the 
special detestation of the pseudo-scientific school, 
Froude was pre-eminent. Few things excite more 
suspicion than a good style, and no theory is more 
plausible than that which associates clearness of 
expression with shallowness of thought. Froude, 
however, was no fine writer, no coiner of phrases 
for phrases' sake. A mere chronicler of events 
he would hardly have cared to be. He had a 
doctrine to propound, a gospel to preach. " The 
Reformation," he said, " was the hinge on which 
all modern history turned," ^ and he regarded 
the Reformation as a revolt of the laity against 

1 Lectures on the Council of Trent, p. i. 
72 



THE HISTORY 73 

the clergy, rather than a contest between two sets 
of rival dogmas for supremacy over the human 
mind. That is the key of the historical position 
which he took up from the first, and always de- 
fended. He held the Church of Rome to have 
been the enemy of human freedom, and of British 
independence. He was devoid of theological pre- 
judice, and never reviled Catholicism as Newman 
reviled it before his conversion. But he held that 
the reformers, alike in England, in France, and 
in Germany, were fighting for truth, honesty, 
and private judgment against priestcraft and 
ecclesiastical tyranny. The scepticism and cyni- 
cism of which he was often accused were on the 
surface. They were provoked by what he felt 
to be hypocrisy and sham. They were not his 
true self. He believed firmly, unflinchingly, and 
always in " the grand, simple landmarks of 
morality," which existed before all Churches, and 
would exist if all Churches disappeared. 

oil yap Tavvv ye Kd)(6is, ahX' aei rroTe 
^rj raira, Koiidels oidev e^ otov <pavr}. 

Before Abraham was they were, and it is im- 
possible to imagine a time when they will have 
ceased to be. 

Froude was an Erastian, holding that the 
Church should be subordinate to the State. 
True religion is incompatible with persecution. 
But true religion is rare, and the best modern 
security against the persecutor is the secular 



74 LIFE OF FROUDE 

power. Mr. Spurgeon once excited great applause 
from members of his Church by declaring that 
the Baptists had never persecuted. When the 
cheers had subsided he explained that it was 
because they had never had a chance. Froude 
was convinced that ecclesiastics could not be 
trusted, and that they would oppress the laity 
unless the laity muzzled them. He held that 
the reformers had been calumniated, that their 
services were in danger of being forgotten, and 
that the modern attempt to ignore the Reforma- 
tion was not only unhistorical, but disingenuous. 
I He wrote partly to rehabilitate them, and partly 
to prove that Henry VHI. had conferred great 
'benefits upon England by his repudiation of 
Papal authority. He took, as he considered 
it his duty to take, the side of individual 
liberty against ecclesiastical authority, and of 
England against Rome. The idea that an his- 
torian was to have no opinions of his own, or 
that, having them, he was to conceal them, never 
entered his mind. 

That Froude had any prejudice against the 
Church of England as such is a baseless fancy. 
He believed in the Church of his childhood, and, 
unless the word be used in the narrow sense of 
the clerical profession, he never left it to the end 
of his days. It was to him, as it was to his father, 
a Protestant Church, out of communion with 
Rome, cut off from the Pope and his court by the 
great upheaval of the sixteenth century. It is 



THE HISTORY 75 

unreasonable, and indeed foolish, to say that that 
opinion disqualified him to be the historian of 
Henry VIII. , and Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth. 
The Catholicism of Lingard is not considered 
to be a disqmalification by sensible Protestants. 
Froude's faults as an historian were of a different 
kind, and had nothing to do with his ecclesiastical 
views. He was not the only Erastian, nor was 
he an Erastian pure and simple. He has left it 
on record that Macaulay's unfairness to Cranmer 
in the celebrated review of Hallam's Constitu- 
tional History first suggested to him the project 
of his own book. His besetting sin was not 
so much Erastianism, or secularism, as a love 
of paradox. Henry VIII. seemed to him not 
merely a great statesman and a true patriot, but 
a victim of persistent misrepresentation, whose 
lofty motives had been concealed, and displaced 
by vile, baseless calumnies. More and Fisher, 
honoured for three centuries as saints, he sus- 
pected, and, as he thought, discovered to have 
been traitors who justly expiated their offences 
on the block. He was not satisfied with proving 
that there was a case for Henry, and that the 
triumph of Rome would have been the end of 
civil as well as spiritual freedom : he must go 
on to whitewash the tyrant himself, and to prove 
that his marriage' with Anne Boleyn, like his 
separation from Katharine of Aragon, was simply 
the result of an unselfish desire to provide the 
country with a male heir. The refusal of More 



76 LIFE OF FROUDE 

and Fisher to acknowledge the royal supremacy 
may show that they were Catholics first and 
Englishmen afterwards, without impugning their 
personal integrity, or justifying the malice of 
Thomas Cromwell. To judge Henry as if he were 
a constitutional king with a secure title, in no 
more danger from Catholics than Louis XIV. was 
from Huguenots, is doubtless preposterous. If the 
Catholics had got the upper hand, they would 
have deposed him, and put him to death. In that 
fell strife of mighty opposites the voice of tolera- 
tion was not raised, and would not have been 
heard. Tyrant as he was himself, Henry in his 
battle against Rome did represent the English 
people, and his cause was theirs. Froude brought 
out this great truth, and to bring it out was a 
great service. Unfortunately he went too far 
the other way, and impartial readers who had 
no sympathy with Cardinal Campeggio were 
revolted by what looked like a defence of cruel 
persecution. The welfare of a nation is more 
important in history than the observance of any 
marriage ; and if Henry had been guided by mere .. 
desire, there was no reason why he should marry 
Anne Boleyn at all. Froude's achievement, which, 
despite all criticism, remains, was marred or 
modified by his too obvious zeal for upsetting 
established conclusions and reversing settled 
beliefs. 

The moment that Froude had made up his 
mind, which was not till after long and careful 



THE HISTORY 77 

research, he began to paint a picture. The 
Hghts were dehcately and adroitly arranged. 
The artist's eye set all accessories in the most 
telling positions. He was an advocate, an in- 
comparably brilliant advocate, in his mode of 
presenting a case. But it was his own case, the 
case in which he believed, not a case he had been 
retained to defend. When he came to deal with 
Elizabeth he was on firmer ground. By that 
time the Reformation was an accomplished fact, 
and the fiercest controversies lay behind him. 
Disgusted as he was with the scandals invented 
against the virgin queen, he did not shrink from 
exposing the duplicity and meanness which tarnish 
the lustre of her imperishable renown. Like 
Knox, he was insensible to the charms of Mary 
Stuart, and that is a deficiency hard to forgive 
in a man. Yet who can deny that Elizabeth only 
did to Mary as Mary would have done to her ? 
The morality of the Guises was as much a part 
of Mary as her scholarship, her grace, her profound 
statecraft, the courage which a voluptuous life 
.never impared. Froude was not thinking of her, 
or of any woman. He was thinking of England. 
Between the fall of Wolsey and the defeat of the 
Armada was decided the great question whether 
England should be CathoUc or Protestant, bond 
or free. The dazzling Queen of Scots, like the 
virtuous Chancellor and the holy Bishop, were 
on the wrong side. Henry and Elizabeth, with 
all their faults, were on the right one. That is 



78 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the pith and marrow of Froude's book. Those 
who think that in history there is no side may 
blame him. He followed Carlyle. " Froude is 
a man of genius/' said Jowett : ** he has been 
abominably treated." '' II avu juste/' said a young 
critic of our own day ^ in reply to the usual charges 
of inaccuracy. The real object of his attack was 
that ecclesiastical corruption which belongs to no 
Church exclusively, and is older than Christianity 
itself. 

The main portion of Froude's life for nearly 
twenty years was occupied with his History 
of England from the fall of Wolsey to the defeat 
of the Spanish Armada. It is on a large scale, 
in twelve volumes. Every chapter bears ample 
proof of laborious study. Froude neglected no 
source of information, and spared himself no 
pains in pursuit of it. At the Record Office, in 
the British Museum, at Hatfield, among the price- 
less archives preserved in the Spanish village of 
Simancas, he toiled with unquenchable ardour 
and unrelenting assiduity. Nine- tenths of his 
authorities were in manuscript. They were in 
five languages. They filled nine hundred volumes. 
Excellent linguist as he was, Froude could hardly 
avoid falling into some errors. With his general 
accuracy as an historian I shall have to deal in 
a later part of this book. Here I am only con- 
cerned to prove that he took unlimited pains. 
He kept no secretary, he was his own copyist, and 

^ Arthur Strong. 



THE HISTORY 79 

he was not a good proof-reader. Those natural 
blots, quas aut incuria fudit, aut humana parum 
cavit natura, are to be found, no doubt, in his pages. 
From a conscientious obedience to truth as he 
understood it?, and a resolute determination to 
present it as he saw it, he never swerved. He 
was not a chronicler, but an artist, a moralist, 
and a man of genius. Unless an historian can 
put himself into the place of the men about 
whom he is writing, think their thoughts, share 
their hopes, their aspirations, and their fears, 
he had better be taking a healthy walk than 
poring over dusty documents. A paste-pot, a 
pair of scissors, the mechanical precision of a 
copying clerk, are all useful in their way; but 
they no more make an historian than a cowl 
makes a monk. 

IloXXot fxev vapdrjKOcf^opoL, Ba/t^ot oe re iravpoi. 
There are many writers of history, but very few 
historians. Froude wrote with a definite purpose, 
which he never concealed from himself, or from 
others. He believed, and he thought he could 
prove, that the Reformation freed England from 
a cruel and degrading yoke, that the things which 
were Caesar's should be rendered to Caesar, and 
that the Church should be restricted within its 
own proper sphere. Those, if such there be, who 
think that an historian should have no opinions 
are entitled to condemn him. Those who simply 
disagree with him are not. No man is hindered 
by any other cause than laziness, incompetence, 



8o LIFE OF FROUDE 

or more immediately profitable occupations, from 
writing a history of the same period in exactly 
the opposite sense. 

Fronde's earliest chapters were set in type, and 
distributed among a few friends whose judgment 
he trusted. The most sympathetic was Carlyle, 
who pronounced the introductory survey of 
England's social condition at the opening of the 
sixteenth century to be just what it ought to have 
been. Carlyle's marginal notes upon the first two 
chapters are extremely interesting, and doubly 
characteristic, because they illustrate at the same 
time his practical shrewdness and his intense 
prejudice. For these reasons, and also because 
in many instances his advice was followed, it 
may be worth while to give some account of 
his pencil jottings, written when Carlyle's hand 
was still firm, and as legible as they were fifty 
years ago. Upon the first chapter as a whole, 
Carlyle's judgment, though critical, was highly 
favourable. 

** This," he wrote, " is a vigorous, sunny, calm, 
and wonderfully effective delineation ; pleasant 
to read ; and bids fair to give much elucidation 
to what is coming. Curious too as got mainly 
from good reading of the Statutes at large ! Might 
there be with advantage (or not) some subdivision 
into sections, with headings, etc ? Also, here and 
there, some condensation of the excerpts given — 
condensation into narrative where too long- 
winded? Item, for symmetry's sake (were there 



J 



THE HISTORY 8i 

nothing else) is not some outline of spiritual 
England a little to be expected ? Or will that 
come piece-meal as we proceed ? Hint^ then, some- 
where to that effect ? Also remember a little that 
there was an ,Europe as well as an England ? In 
sum, Euge." Such praise from such a man was 
balm to Froude's wounds and tonic to his nerves. 
Practically expelled from his college, regarded by 
his own family as almost a black sheep, he found 
himself taken up, and treated as an equal, 
by a writer of European fame, whom of all his 
contemporaries he most admired. In deference 
to Carlyle he rewrote his opening paragraphs, 
and added useful dates. European history and 
spiritual England do come into far greater pro- 
minence "as we proceed." The abbreviation 
and summary of extracts might, I think, have 
been carried farther with advantage. But it is 
curious that Froude was attacked for the precisely 
opposite fault of treating his authorities with too 
much freedom. Carlyle, who knew what historical 
labour was, saw at once that Froude dealt with 
his material as a born student and an ardent lover 
of truth. His suggestions were always excellent, 
as sound and just as they were careful and kind. 
One criticism, which Froude disregarded, shows 
not only Carlyle' s wide knowledge (that appears 
throughout), but also that his long residence south 
of the Tweed never made him really Enghsh. It 
refers to Froude's description of the English 
volunteers at Calais who " were for years the 
(2310) 6 



82 LIFE OF FROUDE 

terror of Normandy/' and of Englishmen gen- 
erally as " the finest people in all Europe/' 
nurtured in profuse abundance on " great shins 
of beef." 

" This/' says Carlyle, " seems to me exagger- 
ated ; what we call John-Bullish. The English 
are not, in fact, stronger, braver, truer, or better 
than the other Teutonic races : they never fought 
better than the Dutch, Prussians, Swedes, etc., have 
done. For the rest, modify a little : Frederick 
the Great was brought up on beer-sops (bread 
boiled in beer), Robert Burns on oatmeal porridge ; 
and Mahomet and the Caliphs conquered the 
world on barley meal." 

David Hume would have thoroughly approved 
of this note. Froude's patriotism was incor- 
rigible, and he left the passage as it stood. A 
little farther on Carlyle's hatred of political 
economy, in which Froude fully shared, breaks 
out with amusing vigour. " If," wrote the 
younger historian, " the tendency of trade to 
assume a form of mere self-interest be irresistible," 
etc. '* And is it ? " comments the elder. " Let 
us all get prussic acid, then." A recent speculator 
preferred cyanide of potassium. But if " mere 
self-interest " comprises fraudulent balance-sheets, 
it cannot claim any support from political economy. 
When Carlyle drew up a petition to the House of 
Commons for amending the law of copyright, he 
was guided by self-interest, but it was not a counsel 
of despair. The City Companies, says Froude, 



THE HISTORY 83 

*' are all which now remain of a vast organisation 
which once penetrated the entire trading life of 
England — an organisation set on foot to realise 
that impossible condition of commercial excel- 
lence under \(^hich man should deal faithfully 
with his brother, and all wares offered for sale, 
of whatever kind, should honestly be what they 
pretend to be," 

For ** impossible " Carlyle proposed " highly 
necessary, if highly difficult," and a similar change 
was made. But why people who do not under- 
stand political economy should be more honest 
than those who do neither master nor disciple 
condescended to explain. It is much easier to 
preach than to argue. More valuable than these 
gibes is Carlyle' s reminder that guilds were not 
peculiar to England. 

" In Liibeck, Augsburg, Niirnberg, Dantzig, 
not to speak of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, — George 
Hudson and the Gospel of Cheap and Nasty were 
totally unknown entities. The German Gilds even 
made poetry together ; Herr Sachs of Niirnberg 
was one of the finest pious genial master shoe- 
makers that ever lived anywhere — his shoes and 
rhymes alike genuine (I can speak for the rhymes) 
and worthy." 

It is strange that Carlyle should have taken the 
trouble to correct a misquotation from Juvenal, 
and still stranger that Froude should have left the 
words uncorrected. Misquotation was a too fre- 
quent habit with him. In his second chapter he 



84 LIFE OF FROUDE 

applies to Henry the famous passage in Tacitus' s 
character of Galba, and changes capax imperii to 
dignus imperii, though dignus would have required 
imperio, and would then have made inferior sense. 
Some of Carlyle's queries were productive of really 
substantial results ; for instance, the simple words 
*' such as " brought out the fact that the spoils of 
the monasteries were in part devoted to national 
defence. " Inveterate frenzy " is Froude's de- 
scription of the years covered by the reign of 
Edward IV. " Fine healthy years in the main, 
for all their fighting," notes Carlyle. " See the 
Paston Letters, for one proof." Some of his 
recommendations are racily colloquial. " Give 
us time of day " is his mode of asking for more 
dates. Henry's instructions to his Secretary or 
Ambassador at Rome he pronounces " very rough 
matter to set upon the table uncooked," and 
recommends an Appendix, unluckily without avail. 
" Abridge, redact," he exclaims towards the end, 
but there was no abridgment and no redaction. 
On the other hand, " prestige," stigmatised by 
Carlyle as " a bad newspaper word," was rejected 
for " influence," and his insistence that English 
only should be used in the text, foreign languages 
being confined to notes, was accepted by Froude. 
That " new doctrines ever gain readiest hearing 
among the common people " he left to stand 
as a general proposition, although, as Carlyle 
reminded him, ** in Germany it was by no means 
the common people who believed Luther first, 



THE HISTORY 85 

but the Elector of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, etc., 
etc. — Scotland too." 

The conclusion at which Carlyle arrived after 
reading the second chapter is less favourable 
than his verjiict upon the first. Inasmuch, 
however, as some of the modifications suggested 
were made, though by no means all of them, and 
as Carlyle 's notions of history are worth know- 
ing on their own account, I will transcribe his 
words, which are dated the 27th of September, 

1855: 

" This chapter contains a great deal of well- 
meditated knowledge, just insight, and sound 
thinking ; seems calculated to explain the Phse- 
nomenon of the Reformation to an unusual degree, 
in fact has great merit of many kinds, historical 
among the rest. But it seems to me (i) to be 
more of a Dissertation than a Narrative ; to 
want dates, specific details, outline of every kind. 
(2) The management might surely be mended ? 
It does not " begin at the beginning " (which 
indeed is the most difficult of all things, but also 
the most indispensable) ; the story is not clear ; 
or rather, as hinted above, there is no story, but 
an explanation of some story supposed to be 
already known, which is contrary to rule in writing 
* History.' On the whole, the Author seems to 
have such a conception of the subject as were 
well worth a better setting forth ; and if this is 
all he has yet written of his Book, I could almost 
advise him to start afresh, and remodel all this 



86 LIFE OF FROUDE 

second chapter. This is a high demand ; but the 
excellence attainable by him seems also high. 
The rule throughout is, that events should speak. 
Commentary ought to be sparing ; clear insight, 
definite conviction, brought about with a mini- 
mum of Commentary ; that is always the Art of 
History. Alter or not, however, there is such 
a generous breadth of intelligence, of manly sym- 
pathy, sound judgment, and in general of luminous 
solidity, promised in this Book, that I will gladly 
read it, however it be put together. Would it 
not be better to specify a little what Martin Luther 
is about, and keep up a chronological intercourse, 
more or less strict, with the great Continental 
ocean of Reform, the better to understand the 
tides from it that ebb and flow in these Narrow 
Seas ? Some notice of Wiclif too I expected 
in some form or other. Once more. Go on and 
prosper ! " 

The notice of Wycliffe does seem a rather un- 
reasonable expectation, and a history of England 
loses identity if it becomes a history of Europe. 
But Carlyle's principles, whether he always acted 
upon them himself or no, are excellent, and, 
though Froude's second chapter was not quite re- 
written, the effect of them may be seen in the rest 
of the book. 

' Carlyle's influence upon Froude, which happily 
never extended to his style, confirmed him in his 
attachment to Protestantism and his hatred of 
Rome. It also accounted for much of Froude's 



THE HISTORY 87 

belief in despots. In democracy he had no 
faith. Manhood suffrage in England, would, 
he thought, even in the wonderful year 1588, 
the last of his History, have restored the Pope. 
This was per|iaps a little inconsistent with his 
theory that Henry VIII. had been popular with 
all classes. Yet at least Froude could distin- 
guish one despot from another. He was entirely 
opposed, as we have seen, to the alliance with 
Louis Napoleon against Russia, which culminated 
in the Crimean War. Otherwise his sympathy 
with Liberalism was chiefly academic. He re- 
joiced in the University Commission, and in 
the consequent removal of rehgious tests for 
undergraduates. But he took Carlyle's Latter- 
Day Pamphlets for gospel, and had no faith 
in peace by great Exhibitions, or progress by 
political reform. The war with Russia justified 
the first part of his creed, and even Liberals in 
the House of Commons seemed tacitly to agree 
with the second. To the glorification of mere 
money-making, the worship of the golden calf, 
the sincerest and the most fashionable of all wor- 
ships, both he and Carlyle were equally opposed. 
They were agreed with the Socialists and with 
Ruskin in their dislike of seeing bricks and mortar 
substituted for green fields, smoky chimneys for 
church towers, myriads of factory hands for the 
rural population of England. Carlyle still called 
himself a Radical, a believer in root and branch 
change, but moral rather than political. His faith 



88 LIFE OF FROUDE 

in representative institutions had been shaken by 
reflecting that the Long Parhament, the best ever 
assembled in England, would have given up the 
cause of the Civil War if it had not been for 
Cromwell and the army. Although he had been 
one of Peel's warmest supporters in 1846, he had 
come to dread Liberalism as tending towards 
anarchy, and he adopted the singular verbal fallacy 
that a low franchise would mean a low standard 
of politics. Froude, though he still called him- 
self a Liberal, and in some respects always was 
so, swore by Carlyle, acknowledged him as his 
master, and repeated his creed. Carlyle had 
many admirers, but few disciples, and he naturally 
set great value on Froude' s adhesion. He had 
always a great contempt for universal suffrage. 
It would have given, he said grimly, the same voice 
in the government of Palestine to Jesus Christ 
and to Judas Iscariot. But whatever might have 
happened to Judas, the Son of man had not where 
to lay His head, and would certainly have been 
excluded under any system which met the approval 
of Carlyle. In Latter-Day Pamphlets Carlyle had 
made a tremendous attack upon Downing Street, 
and the administrative deficiencies which the 
Crimean campaign disclosed could be treated as 
confirmatory evidence in his favour. As a matter 
of fact, Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston were 
all the same to him. He was denouncing the 
Parhamentary system, which has borne up against 
worse Ministers than the Duke of Newcastle. If 



THE HISTORY 89 

Sebastopol had been taken after the Alma, as it 
well might have been, Carlyle would not have 
altered his tone. Nothing would have prevented 
him from delivering his message, or Froude from 
accepting it. , 

The first two volumes of the History appeared 
in 1856. They dealt with the latter part of 
Henry's reign, when he had rid himself of Wolsey, 
and was personally ruling England with the aid 
of Thomas Cromwell. Froude had to describe 
the dissolution of the monasteries, and besides 
describing he justified it. He had to depict the 
absolute government of Henry ; and he argued 
that it was a necessity of the times. We must 
not transfer the passions of one age to the con- 
troversies of another. In the seventeenth century 
the issue was between the Stuart kings and their 
Parliaments, or, in other words, between the Crown 
and the people. In the sixteenth century king 
and Parliament were united against an alien 
power, the Catholic Church, and a foreign prince, 
the Pope. Before England was free she had to 
become Protestant, and Henry, whatever his 
motives, was on the Protestant side. That he 
was himself an unscrupulous tyrant is beside the 
point. He was an ephemeral phsenomenon, and, 
as a matter of fact, his tyranny, which the people 
never felt, died with him. The Church of Rome 
was a permanent fact, immortal, if not unchange- 
able, which would have reduced England, if it 
had prevailed, to the condition of France, Italy, 



90 LIFE OF FROUDE 

and Spain. Whether Henry VIII. was a good 
man, or a bad one, is not the question. Bishop 
Stubbs, who cannot be accused of anti-eccle- 
siastical, or anti-theological prejudice, calls him 
a " grand, gross figure," not to be tried and con- 
demned by ordinary standards of private morals. 
The only interest of his character now is its bearing 
upon the fate of England. If the Pope, and not 
the king, had become head of the English Church, 
would it have been for the advantage of the English 
people ? By frankly taking the king's side 
Froude made two different and influential sets 
of enemies, especially at Oxford. High Church- 
men, then and for the rest of his life, assailed 
him for hostility to *' the Church," forgetting or 
ignoring the fact that the Church of England is 
not the Church of Rome. Liberals, on the 
other hand, mistook him for a friend of lawless 
despotism, as if Henry's opponents had been 
constitutional statesmen, and not arrogant 
Churchmen, hating liberty even more than he 
did. 

That Froude had no faith in modern Liberalism 
is true enough. His political leader in 1856 was 
neither Palmerston nor Cobden, but Carlyle. 
In 1529 he would have been a King's man and 
not a Pope's man, an Englishman first and a 
Churchman afterwards. Lord Melbourne used 
to declare, in his paradoxical manner, that 
Henry VIII. was the greatest man who ever 
lived, because he always had his own way. 



THE HISTORY 91 

Strength is not greatness, and Melbourne must 
not be taken literally. What can be pleaded 
for Henry, without paradox and with truth, 
is that he imposed upon Catholic and Protestant 
alike the supremacy of the law. Froude preached 
the subordination of the Church to the State ; 
and while supporters of the voluntary principle 
regarded him with suspicion, adherents to the 
sacerdotal principle shrank from him with 
horror. 

The reviews of Froude' s earliest volumes were 
mostly unfavourable. The Times indeed was ap- 
preciative and sympathetic. But The Christian 
Remembrancer was emphatic in its censure, 
and The Edinburgh. Review, of which Henry 
Reeve had just become editor, was vehemently 
hostile. 

After all, however, an author depends, not upon 
this party, nor upon that party, but upon the 
general public. The public took to Froude' s 
History from the first. They took to it because it 
interested them, and carried them on. Paradoxi- 
cal it might be. Partial it might be. Readable 
it undoubtedly was. Parker's confidence was more 
than justified. The book sold as no history had 
sold except Gibbon's and Macaulay's. There were 
no obscure, no ugly sentences. The reader was 
carried down the stream with a motion all the 
pleasanter because it was barely perceptible. The 
name of the author was in all mouths. His old 
college perceived that he was a credit, not a 



92 LIFE OF FROUDE 

disgrace to it, and the Rector of Exeter^ courteously- 
invited him to replace his name on the books. 
The Committee of the Athenaeum elected him an 
honorary member of the Club. Even the Arch- 
deacon, now a ver\^ old man, discovered at last 
that his youngest son was an honour to the name 
of Froude. He knew something of ecclesiastical 
history, and he understood that the character 
of Henry, which certainly left much to be de- 
sired, might have been blackened of set purpose 
by ecclesiastical historians. Froude' s reputation 
was made. The reviewers, most of whom knew 
nothing about the subject, could not hurt him. 
He had followed his bent, and chosen his voca- 
tion well. The gift of narrative was his, and 
he had had thoughts of turning novelist. But 
to write a novel, or at least a successful novel, 
was a thing he could never do. He had 
not the spirit of romance. If there was any- 
thing romantic in him, it was love of England, 
and of the sea. From the ocean rovers of Eliza- 
beth to the colonial path-finders of his own day, 
he delighted in men who carried the name and 
fame of England to distant places of the earth. 
He was an advocate rather than a judge. He 
held so strongly the correctness of his own views, 
and the importance of having a right judgment 
in all things, that he sometimes gave undue pro- 
minence to the facts which supported his theory. 
It was only fair and reasonable that critics should 

» Dr. Lightfoot. 



THE HISTORY 93 

draw attention to this characteristic of Froude 
as an historian. That he dehberately falsified 
history is a baseless delusion. A sterner moralist, 
a more strenuous worker, it would have been 
difficult to find. An artist he could not help 
being, for it was in the blood. Once his fingers 
grasped the pen, they began instinctively to 
draw a picture. He was not, like Macaulay, 
a rhetorician. He had inherited from his father 
a contempt for oratory, and he did not speak well 
in public. But when he had studied a period 
he saw it in a series of moving scenes as the 
figures passed along the stage. That he was not 
always accurate in detail is notorious. Accuracy 
is a question of degree. There are mistakes 
in Macaulay. There are mistakes in Gibbon. 
Humanum est err are. An historian must be judged 
not by the number of slips he has made in names 
or dates, but by the general conformity of his 
representation with the object. Canaletto painted 
pictures of Venice in which there was not a palace 
out of drawing, nor a brick out of place. Yet not 
all Canaletto' s Venetian pictures would give a 
stranger much idea of the atmosphere of Venice. 
Glance at one Turner, in which a Venetian could 
hardly identify a building or a canal, and there 
lies before you the Queen of the Sea. Serious 
blunders have been discovered by microscopic 
criticism in Carlyle's French Revolution ; it remains 
the most vivid and impressive version of a 
tremendous drama that has ever been given to 



94 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the world. Froiide and Carlyle had the satnc 
scorn of the multitude, the same belief in 
destiny, the same love of truth. Froude was 
more sceptical, less inclined to hero-worship, 
far more academic in thought and style. They 
agreed in setting the moral lessons of history 
above any theory of scientific development, and 
in cultivating the human interest of the narrative 
as that which alone abides. 

That Froude set out with a polemical purpose 
is not to be denied. He had seen enough of the 
Romanist or Anglican revival to dislike it heartily, 
and he held that Protestant countries were the 
most prosperous because they were morally the 
best. Although he did not accept the Evangelical 
theology, he thought Calvinism the most philo- 
sophic form of religious belief, and Puritanism 
the soundest sort of ethical creed. The Church 
of England as understood by his father was to 
him the healthiest of ecclesiastical institutions, 
teaching godliness, inculcating duty, saying as 
little as possible about dogma. Religion, he said, 
was meant to be obeyed, not to be examined. 
The sun was invaluable, unless you looked at it. 
If you looked at it, you saw neither it nor any- 
thing else. But for the Reformation, England, 
like France, might be under a worthless despot 
sanctified by the Church, or, like Spain, be 
trampled under the feet of priests. The statutes 
of Henry VIII. were the title-deeds of the English 
Church. Henry established the supremacy of 



THE HISTORY 95 

the State by letters patent, prcemunire, and 
conge d'elire. The old bluebeard Henry, who 
spent his whole time in murdering his wives, 
was a nursery toy. The real Henry put two 
wives to deatjji by lawful means on definite and 
substantial charges of which death was the 
penalty. His subjects were quite as anxious as 
he could be that he should have a male heir, and 
few now suppose that Anne Boleyn, or Katharine 
Howard, was faithful to her husband. The 
Church of Rome would have dethroned Henry 
and incited his subjects to rebellion. It was 
war to the knife, and the King won. 

Froude regarded Henry's victory as the salvation 
of England. The dissolution of the monasteries 
was an incident in the struggle, necessary for the 
public interest, and justified by the evidence. 
Although part of their confiscated property was 
bestowed upon statesmen and courtiers, part went 
to found new Cathedral colleges, or grammar 
schools, and part to strengthen the national 
defences. Henry was a strange mixture, quite 
as much patriot as tyrant, and not safe enough 
on his throne to tolerate Popery. In Froude's 
view he stood for the nation. More and Fisher 
were for a foreign power. The time with 
which Froude chose to deal was full of blazing 
fire, which the ashes of three hundred years im- 
perfectly covered. He did not realise the ordeal 
to which he was exposing himself, the malice he 
was stirring up. His whole life had been a pre- 



96 LIFE OF FROUDE 

paration for the task. When he had the free run 
of his father's hbrary after leaving Westminster, 
it was to the historical shelves that he went first ; 
and while his brother talked eloquently about 
the evils of the Reformation, he himself was 
studying its causes. His own entanglement in 
the Anglican revival was personal, accidental, 
and brief. It was due entirely to his affectionate 
admiration for Newman, aided perhaps, if by 
anything, by curiosity to know something about 
the lives of the saints. For a real saint, such 
as Hugh of Lincoln, he had a sincere reverence, 
and loved to show it. The miraculous element 
disgusted him, and the more he read of ecclesi- 
astical performances the more anti-ecclesiastical 
he became. 

The article in The Edinburgh Review for July, 
1858, upon Froude's first four volumes is an 
elaborate, an able, and a bitter attack. Henry 
Reeve, the editor of The Edinburgh at that time, 
and for many years afterwards, was not himself 
a scholar, like his illustrious predecessor, Cornewall 
Lewis. He was a Whig of the most conventional 
type, regarding Macaulay and Hallam as the 
ideal historians, suspicious of novelty, and dis- 
mayed by paradox. Froude's critic belonged 
to a more advanced school of Liberalism, and 
shuddered at the glorification of a " tyrant " 
like Henry VIII. That he had also some reason 
for personally detesting Froude is plain from his 
malicious references to the Lives of the Saints, 



THE HISTORY 97 

and to The Nemesis of Faith, which Froude 
himself had, so far as he could, suppressed. 
When Froude's name was restored to the books 
of Exeter College in 1858, he wrote to Dr. 
Lightfoot, the Rector, that he regretted the 
publication both of The Nemesis and of Shadows 
of the Clouds. His object in future, he added, 
would be to defend the Church of England. That 
his idea of the Church was the same as Light- 
foot's is improbable. Froude meant the Church 
of the Reformation, of private judgment, of an 
open Bible, of lay independence of bishop or 
priest. To that Church he was faithful, and he 
sympathised in sentiment, if he did not agree 
in dogma, with evangelical Christians. With 
Catholics, Roman or Anglican, he neither had 
nor pretended to have any sympathy at all. The 
Reformation is a convenient name for a complex 
European movement, difficult to describe, and 
almost impossible to define ; but so far as it was 
English and constitutional, it is embodied in the 
legislation of Henry VHL, which substituted the 
supremacy of the Crown for the supremacy of 
the Pope. It was because Froude wrote avowedly 
in defence of that change that he incurred the 
bitter hostility of a powerful section in the English 
Church. He also irritated, partly perhaps because 
his tone betrayed th^ influence of Carlyle, a large 
body of Liberal opinion to which all despotism 
and persecution were obnoxious. The compliments, 
the reluctant compliments, of The Edinburgh re- 
(2310) 7 



98 LIFE OF FROJDE 

viewer must be taken as the admissions of an 
enemy. He acknowledges fully and frankly 
the thoroughness of Froude's research among 
the State Papers of the reign, not merely those 
printed and published by Robert Lemon, but 
" a large manuscript collection of copies of letters, 
minutes of council, theological tracts, parha- 
mentary petitions, depositions upon trials, and 
miscellaneous communications upon the state of 
the country furnished by agents of the Govern- 
ment, all relating to the early years of the English 
Reformation." No historian has ever been more 
diligent than Froude was in reading and collating 
manuscripts. For Henry's reign alone he read 
and transcribed six hundred and eighty-seven 
pages in his small, close handwriting. That in 
so doing, and in working without assistance, he 
should sometimes fall into error was unavoidable. 
But he never spared himself. He was the most 
laborious of students, and his History was as 
difficult to write as it is easy to read. He had, 
as this hostile reviewer says, a " genuine love of 
historical research," and there is point in the 
same critic's complaint that his pages are 
"over-loaded with long quotations from State 
Papers." 

What, then, it will be asked, was the real gist of 
the charges made against Froude by The Edinburgh 
Review ? The question at issue was nothing less 
than the whole policy of Henry's reign, and the 
motives of the King. The character of Henry 



THE HISTORY 99 

is one of the most puzzling in historical literature, 
and Froude had to deal with the most dif&cult 
part of it. To the virtues of his earlier days 
Erasmus is an unimpeachable witness. The power 
of his mind and the excellence of his education 
are beyond dispute. He held the Catholic 
faith, he was not naturally cruel, and, compared 
with Francis L, or with Henry of Navarre, he 
was not licentious. But he was brought up to 
believe that the ordinary rules of morality do 
not govern kings. That the king can do no 
wrong is now a maxim of the Constitution, and 
merely means that Ministers are responsible for 
the acts of the Crown. Henry could scarcely 
have been made to understand, even if there had 
been any one to tell him, what a constitutional 
monarch was. Though forced to admit, and 
taught by experience, that he could not safely 
tax his subjects without the formal sanction of 
Parliament, he was in theory absolute, and he 
held it his duty to rule as well as to reign. When 
Charles I. argued, a century later, that a king 
was not bound to keep faith with his subjects, 
it may be doubted whether he deceived himself. 
The thoughts of men are widened with the process 
of the suns. His duty to God Henry would 
always have acknowledged. A historian so widely 
different from Froude as Bishop Stubbs has 
pointed out that, if mere self-indulgence had been 
the king's object, the infinite pains he took to obtain 
a Papal divorce from Katharine of Aragon would 
ii» Of Co 



100 LIFE OF FROUDE 

have been thrown away. That he had a duty 
to his neighbour, male or female, never entered 
his head. His subjects were his own, to deal with 
as he pleased. Revolting as this theory may 
seem now, it was held by most people then, and 
there was not a man in England, not Sir Thomas 
More himself, who would have told the King that 
it was untrue. 

It is with the divorce of Katharine that the 
difficulty of estimating Henry begins. Froude's 
narrative sets out with the marriage of Anne 
Boleyn. Here the reviewer plants his first arrow. 
The divorce was a nullity, having no authority 
higher than Cranmer's. Anne Boleyn, as is 
likely enough from other causes, was never the 
King's wife, and Elizabeth was illegitimate, though 
she had of course a Parliamentary title to the 
throne. It seems clear, however, that inasmuch 
as Katharine had been his brother Prince Arthur's 
wife, the King could not lawfully marry her, 
according to the canons of the Catholic Church. 
Why did he marry Anne Boleyn ? The reviewer 
says because he was in love with her, and triumph- 
antly refers to the King's letters, printed in the 
Appendix of Hearne's Avesbury} They are un- 
doubtedly love-letters, and they contain one 
indelicate expression. Compared with Mirabeau's 
letters to Sophie de Monnier, they are cold and 
chaste. Froude says that the King wanted a 
male heir, and he gives the same reason for the 

1 Oxford, 1720. 



THE HISTORY loi 

scandalously indecent haste with which Jane Sey- 
mour was married the day after Anne's execution. 
The character of Henry VHL is only important 
now as it bears upon the policy of his reign. That 
Froude washed him too white is almost as certain 
as that Lingard painted him too black. The 
notion that lust supplies the key to his marriages 
and their consequences is utterly ridiculous. The 
most dissolute of English kings was content, and 
more than content, with one wife. On the other 
hand, Froude does at least give a clue when he 
suggests that these frequent marriages were 
political moves. A female sovereign reigning in 
her own right had never been known in England, 
and up to the birth of Jane Seymour's son Edward 
the whole kingdom passionately desired that 
there should be a Prince of Wales. Edward 
himself was but a sickly child, and was not ex- 
pected to live even for the short span of his actual 
career. Credulous indeed must they be who 
maintain the innocence either of Anne Boleyn 
or of Katharine Howard, and there seems small 
use in holding with the learned Father Gasquet 
that Anne was not guilty of the offences imputed 
to her, but had done something too bad to be 
mentioned on a trial for incest. It is a question 
of evidence, and the evidence is lost. But the 
Grand Jury which presented Anne was respectable, 
the Court which convicted her was distinguished, 
and neither she nor any of her paramours denied 
their guilt on the scaffold. Simple adultery in 



102 LIFE OF FROUDE 

a queen was capital then, if indeed it be not 
capital now. In an ordinary husband Henry's 
conduct would have been revolting. It is not 
attractive in him. Stubbs pleads that we cannot 
judge him, and abandons the attempt in despair. 
As he rejects with equal decision both the Roman 
Catholic picture and Froude's, he only puts us all 
to ignorance again. Froude is at least intelligible. 
It is a fact, and not a fancy, that Henry provided 
from the spoils of the monasteries for the defence 
of the realm, that he founded new bishoprics 
from the same source, that he disarmed the 
ecclesiastical tribunals, and broke the bonds of 
Rome. The corruption of at least the smaller 
monasteries, some of which were suppressed by 
Wolsey before the rise of Cromwell, is established 
by the balance of evidence, and the disappearance 
of the Black Book which set forth their condition 
was only to be expected in the reign of Mary. 
The crime which weighs most upon the memory 
of the King is the execution of Fisher and More. 
More, though he persecuted heretics, is the saint 
and philosopher of the age. Of Fisher Macaulay 
says that he was worthy to have lived in a better 
age, and died in a better cause. But what if these 
good men, from purely conscientious motives, 
would have brought over a Spanish army to 
coerce their Protestant fellow-subjects and their 
lawful sovereign ? That, and not speculative 
error, is the real charge against them. Henry 
did all he could to put himself in the wrong. His 



THE HISTORY 103 

atrocious request that More " would not use many 
words on the scaffold " makes one hate him after 
the lapse of well-nigh four hundred years. The 
question, however, is not one of personal feeling. 
Good men go wrong. Bad men are made by 
Providence to be instruments for good. It is 
not More, nor Fisher, it is the Bluebeard of the 
children's history-books who gave England Miles 
Coverdale's Bible, who freed her from the yoke 
that oppressed Erance till the Revolution, and 
oppresses Spain to-day. Froude's first four 
volumes are an eloquent indictment of Ultra- 
montamsm, a plea for the Reformation, a sustained 
argument for English liberties and freedom of 
thought. No such book can be impartial in the 
sense of admitting that there is as much to be 
said on one side as on the other. Eroude replied 
to The Edinburgh Review in Eraser's Magazine 
for September, 1858, and in the following month 
the reviewer retorted. He did not really shake 
the foundation of Eroude' s case, which was the 
same as Luther's. Luther, like Eroude, was no 
democrat. To both of them the Reformation 
was a protest against ecclesiastical tyranny, or 
for spiritual freedom. " The comedy has ended 
in a marriage," said Erasmus of Luther and 
Luther's wife. It was not a comedy, and it had 
not ended. 

Eroude sometimes goes too far. When he de- 
fends the Boiling Act, under which human beings 
were actually boiled alive in Smithfield, he shakes 



104 LIFE OF FROUDE 

confidence in his judgment. He sets too much 
value upon the verdicts of Henry's tribunals, 
forgetting Macaulay's emphatic declaration that 
State trials before 1688 were murder under the 
forms of law. Although the subject of his Prize 
Essay at Oxford was '^ The Influence of the Science 
of Political Economy upon the Moral and Social 
Welfare of a Nation/* he never to the end of his 
life understood what political economy was. 
Misled by Carlyle, he conceived it to be a sort of 
" Gospel," a rival system to the Christian religion, 
instead of useful generalisations from the observed 
course of trade. He never got rid of the idea that 
Governments could fix the rate of wages and the 
price of goods. A more serious fault found by The 
Edinburgh reviewer, the ablest of all Froude's 
critics, was the implication rather than the 
assertion that Henry VIU.'s Parliaments repre- 
sented the people. The House of Commons in 
the sixteenth century was really chosen through 
the Sheriffs by the Crown, and the preambles of 
the Statutes, upon which Froude relied as evidence 
of contemporary opinion, showed the opinion of the 
Government rather than the opinion of the people. 
They are not of course on that account to be 
neglected. Although the House of Commons 
was no result of popular election, it consisted 
of representative Englishmen, who would hardly 
have acquiesced in statements notoriously untrue. 
Henry neither obtained nor asked the opinion of 
the people, as we understand the phrase. The 



THE HISTORY 105 

" dim common populations " had no more to do 
with the Government of England then than they 
have to do with the Government of India now. 
At the same time it must be remembered that the 
King could not rely upon mere force. He had 
no standing army, and a popular rising would 
have swept him almost without resistance from 
his throne. It is almost as hard for us to imagine 
his position as to understand his character. Par- 
liament, judges, magistrates, were subordinate 
to his sovereign will and pleasure. From the 
authority of the Pope he cut himself free, and 
neither Clement VII. nor Paul III. was strong 
enough to stand up against him. He could hold 
his own with France, with the Empire, with Spain. 
The one Power he never ventured to defy was the 
English people. It was the essence of the Tudor 
monarchy to rely upon the masses rather than the 
classes, to keep the aristocracy down by expressing 
the popular will. So far as Henry took part in 
it, the Reformation was not religious at all. As 
Macaulay drily remarks, he was a good Catholic who 
preferred to be his own Pope. He knew very well 
that Englishmen would like him none the worse 
for resisting the pretensions of Rome, for insisting 
on the royal supremacy, for taking every possible 
step to secure the succession in the male Tudor 
line. If in his callous indifference to the fate of 
the men or women who stood in his way he appears 
scarcely human, we must consider, with Bishop 
Stubbs, his awful isolation. The whole burden of 



io6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the State was upon him, and he could not share 
it. Not till the reign of his elder daughter did his 
subjects realise the horrors from which he had 
delivered them. 

Hostile criticism, though it affected the opinion 
of scholars, did Froude no harm with the public. 
Macaulay's popularity was at its height in 1858. 
But Macaulay passes lightly in his Introduction 
over the sixteenth century, and the reign of 
Henry VIII., or at least the latter part of it, had 
never been so copiously illustrated before. The 
Oxford Movement, which treated the Reformation 
as a discreditable incident worthy of oblivion, had 
not much influence with the laity. Nine English- 
men in ten were quite prepared to glorify the 
reformers, and were by no means sorry to find 
how much evidence there was for the good old 
English view of a Parliamentary Church. The 
Statutes of Supremacy and of PrcBmunire^ even 
the execution of More and Fisher, reminded them 
that the Bishop of Rome neither had nor ought 
to have any jurisdiction within this realm of 
England. That " gospel light first dawned from 
Boleyn's eyes " might be a paradox. It was, 
however, a paradox which contained a truth, and 
it was by no means disagreeable to find that a 
popular king was not a mere monster of iniquity. 
If Henry had been what Cathohc historians 
represented him, the mob would have pulled his 
palace about his ears. 

The public bought the book, and read it ; 



THE HISTORY 107 

for the style, though very unhke Macaulay's, 
was quite as easy to read. In i860 appeared 
the two volumes dealing with Edward VI. and 
Mary, which complete the former half of this 
great book. , After the brief and disturbed 
period of Edward's minority and Somerset's 
Protectorate, the country enjoyed a true Catholic 
reign. Whatever may have been the religion of 
Henry, there could be no doubt about Mary's. 
Mary had only one use for Protestants, and that 
was to burn them. Among her first victims were 
Latimer and Ridley, two bright ornaments of 
Christian faith and practice, who committed the 
deadly sin of believing that it was against the 
truth of Christ's natural body to be in heaven and 
earth at the same time. To them soon succeeded 
Cranmer, the father of the English liturgy, not 
a man of unblemished character, but incomparably 
superior to Gardiner, to Bonner, or to Pole. For 
Cranmer Froude had a peculiar affection, and his 
account of the Archbishop's martyrdom is unsur- 
passed by any other passage in the History. I 
need make no apology for quoting the end of it ; 
" So perished Cranmer. He was brought out with 
the eyes of his soul blinded to make sport for his 
enemies, and in his death he brought upon them 
a wider destruction than he had effected by his 
teaching while alive. Pole was appointed next 
day to the See of Canterbury ; but in other respects 
the Court had overreached themselves by their 
cruelty. Had they been contented to accept the 



io8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

recantation, they would have left the Archbishop 
to die broken-hearted, pointed at by the finger 
of pitying scorn, and the Reformation would 
have been disgraced in its champion. They were 
tempted, by an evil spirit of revenge, into an act 
unsanctioned even by their own bloody laws ; 
and they gave him an opportunity of redeeming 
his fame, and of writing his name in the roll of 
martyrs. The worth of a man must be measured 
by his life, not by his failure under a single and 
peculiar trial. The Apostle, though forewarned, 
denied his Master on the first alarm of danger ; 
yet that Master, who knew his nature in its strength 
and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which 
He would build His Church." 

It used to be said of Ernest Renan that he was 
toujours seminariste, and there is a flavour of the 
pulpit in these beautiful sentences. Beautiful 
indeed they are, and not more beautiful than true. 
The implacable Mary, whose ghastly epithet clings 
to her for all time, like the shirt of Nessus, found 
in Pole an apt and zealous pupil in persecution. 
Both are excellent specimens of their Church, 
because according to that Church they are abso- 
lutely blameless. Punctilious in the discharge 
of all religious duties, they were chaste, sober, 
frugal, and honest. They made long prayers. 
They tithed mint, and anise, and cummin. They 
made clean the outside of the cup and platter. 
They firmly believed that they were pleasing the 
Deity they worshipped when they deluged England 



THE HISTORY 109 

with blood. The spirit of the Marian martyrs is 
one of the noblest tributes to the power of true 
religion that the annals of Christendom contain. 
Henry's victims were few and conspicuous. Their 
crime, or allege^d crime, was treason. Mary's were 
obscure, and numbered by the hundred. Many 
of them were artisans and mechanics, who, as 
Burghley afterwards said, knew no faith except 
that they were called upon to abjure. They went 
to the stake without a murmur, sustained against 
the terrors of demonology by their own EngHsh 
hearts, by the love of their friends, and by the grace 
of God. Tennyson, in his play of Queen Mary, has 
put into the mouth of Pole some highly edifying 
sentiments on the want of true faith which prompts 
persecution. Pole's example was very different from 
these precepts. For the wretched Mary there may 
be some excuse ; she was perhaps not wholly sane. 
Her fixed idea, that if she killed Protestants 
enough Heaven would give her a son, was the 
conviction of a lunatic. Her own husband fled 
from her, and left her with no earthly consolation 
save the stake. But Pole was sane enough when 
he burnt better Christians than himself. The true 
story of Mary's reign deserved to be told as Froude 
could tell it. The tale has two sides, and is a 
warning which has been taken to heart. Mary's 
subjects could not rebel. Her Spanish husband 
had behind him the military strength of a great 
Power. But never again, except during the brief 
and disastrous period which led to the expulsion 



110 LIFE OF FROUDE 

of the second James, has England endured a 
Catholic sovereign. Neither her rulers nor her 
laws have always been just to Catholics. To 
tolerate intolerance, though a truly Christian 
lesson, is hard to learn. Mary Tudor and Reginald 
Pole taught the English people once for all what 
the triumph of Catholicism meant. So long as 
they are not supreme, Catholics are the best of 
subjects, of citizens, of neighbours, of friends. 
There is only one country in Europe where they 
are supreme now, and that country is Spain. They 
might have been supreme in England for at least 
a century if it had not been for the daughter of 
Katharine of Aragon and the Legate of Julius III. 
Froude had now completed the first part of 
his great History. The second part, the reign 
of Elizabeth, was reserved for future issue in 
separately numbered volumes. The death of 
Macaulay in December, 1859, left Froude the most 
famous of living English historians, and the ugly 
duckling of the brood had become the glory of 
the family. The reception of his first six volumes 
was a curious one. The general public read, and 
admired. The few critics who were competent to 
form an instructed and impartial opinion perceived 
that, while there were errors in detail, the story 
of the English Reformation, and of the Catholic 
reaction which followed it, had been for the first 
time thoroughly told. Many years afterwards 
Froude said to Tennyson that the most essential 
quality in an historian was imagination. This true 



THE HISTORY iii 

and profound remark is peculiarly liable to be 
misunderstood. People who do not know what 
imagination means are apt to confound it with 
invention, although the latter quality is really the 
last resort of those who are destitute of the former. 
Froude was ah ardent lover of the truth, and de- 
sired nothing so much as to tell it. But it must 
be the truth as perceived by him, not as it might 
appear to others.^ His readers are expected, if 
not to see with his eyes, at least to look from his 
point of view. Honestly believing that the Re- 
formation was a great and beneficent fact in the 
progress of mankind, he was incapable of treating 
it as a sinful rebellion against the authority of 
the Church. Holding Henry VHL, with all his 
faults, to have been the champion of the laity 
against the clergy, of spiritual and intellectual 
freedom against the Roman yoke, he could not 
represent him as a monster of wickedness, tramp- 
ling on morality for his own selfish ends. Doing 
full justice to the conscientiousness of Mary Tudor, 
excusing her more than some think she ought to 
be excused, he depicted the heroes of her bloody 
reign not only in Latimer and Ridley, but in the 
scores and hundreds of lowlier persons who died 
for the faith of Christ. 

^ " Shall we say that there is no such thing as truth or error, 
but that anything is true to a man which he troweth ? and 
not rather, as the solution of a great mystery, that truth there 
is, and attainable it is, but that its rays stream in upon us 
through the medium of our moral as well as our intellectual 
being ? " — Newman's Grammar of Assent, p. 311. 



112 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Protestant as he was, however, Froude was 
an Enghshman first and a Protestant afterwards. 
One might say of his history, as was said of the 
drama which Tennyson founded upon the fifth 
and sixth volumes, that the true heroine is the 
Enghsh people. Much of his popularity was due 
to his patriotism and his Protestantism. On the 
other hand he gave deep and lasting offence to 
High Churchmen, which they neither forgot ijor 
forgave. They could not bear the spectacle of 
a Church established by statute, of the king in 
place of the Pope, of Cromwell and Cranmer 
justified, of More and Fisher condemned. While 
not unwilling to profit by Erastianism, they liked 
its origin kept out of sight. Bishops appointed by 
the Crown and sitting in the House of Lords, 
though awkward facts, were too familiar to be 
upsetting. The secular and Parliamentary origin 
of prcBmunire and conge d'elire were less notorious 
and more disagreeable subjects. They were in- 
deed to be found in Hallam. But Hallam had not 
the popularity or the influence of Froude. Con- 
stitutional histories are for the learned classes. 
Froude wrote for men of the world. The con- 
summate dexterity of his style was only observed 
by trained critics ; its ease and grace were 
the unconscious delight of the humblest reader. 
Froude gave to the Protestant cause the same 
sort of distinction which Newman had given to 
the Oxford Movement. Newman's University 
sermons are neither learned nor profound. Yet 



THE HISTORY 113 

the preacher's mastery of the English language in 
all its rich and manifold resources has, and must 
always have, an irresistible charm. The mantle 
of Newman had fallen on Froude, and Froude had 
also the inde:^atigable diligence of the born his- 
torian. None of his mistakes were due to careless- 
ness. They proceeded rather from the multitude 
of the documents he studied and the self-reliance 
which led him to dispense with all external aid. 
He had of course friendly reviev/ers, such as 
William Bodham Donne, afterwards Examiner of 
Plays,in Fraser, o-nd Charles Kingsley mMacmillan. 
Kingsley, however, though Lord Palmerston made 
him Professor of Modem History at Cambridge, 
was not altogether the best ally for an historian. 
It was in defending Froude that Kingsley made 
his unfortunate attack upon Newman, which led 
to his own discomfiture in the first Preface to the 
Apologia. Froude was unable to support his 
champion's irrelevant and unlucky onslaught. 
Newman's casuistry was a fair subject for criticism ; 
his personal integrity should have been above 
suspicion, and Kingsley' s insinuations against it 
only recoiled upon himself. No one, as his History 
shows, could do ampler justice to individual 
Catholics than Froude, and his feelings for 
Newman were never altered, either by disagree- 
ment or by time. * 

The first part of the History had just been 
finished when a sudden bereavement altered the 
whole course of Froude' s life. On the 21st of April, 



114 LIFE OF FROUDE 

i860, Mrs. Froude died. Her religious opinions 
had been very different from her husband's. She 
had always leant towards the Church of Rome, 
though after her marriage she did not conform 
to it. He was probably under Mrs. Froude' s 
influence when he wrote his Essay on the 
Philosophy of Catholicism in 1851, reprinted 
in the first series of Short Studies, which does 
not strike one as at all characteristic of him, 
and is certainly quite different from his noble dis- 
course on the Book of Job, published two years 
later. Mrs. Froude never cared for London, and 
had always lived in the country. After her death 
Froude took for the first time a London house, and 
settled himself with his children in the neighbour- 
hood of Hyde Park. 

Later in the same year died his publisher, John 
Parker the younger, of a painful and distressing 
illness, through which Froude nursed him with 
tender affection. The elder Parker kept on the 
business, and brought out the remaining volumes 
of Froude's History. His son had been editor of 
Frasefs Magazine, and in that position Froude 
succeeded him at the beginning of 1861. He 
thus found a regular occupation besides his 
History. Eraser had a high literary reputation, 
and among its regular contributors was John 
Skelton, writing under the name of " Shirley," 
who became one of Froude's most intimate friends. 
In the Table Talk of Shirley ^ are some interesting 

^ Blackwood, 1895, 



THE HISTORY 115 

extracts from Froude's letters, as well as a very- 
vivid description of Froude himself. On the 
12th of January, when he was only just installed, 
Froude began a correspondence kept up for thirty 
years by a brief note about Thalatta, a political 
romance by Skelton, with an odd, mixed portrait 
of Canning and Disraeli, very pleasant to read, 
but now almost, I do not know why, neglected. 
Froude is hardly just to it. ** I have read 
Thalatta,'' he writes, " and now what shall I say ? 
for it is so charming, and it might be so much 
more charming. There is no mistake about its 
value. The yacht scene made me groan over the 
recollections of days and occupations exactly the 
same. To wander round the world in a hundred 
tons schooner would be my highest realisation 
of human felicity." Even the name of the book 
must have appealed to Froude. For more than 
almost any other man of letters he loved the sea. 
Yachting was his passion. He pursued it in 
youth despite of qualms, and in later life they 
disappeared. Constitutionally fearless, and an 
excellent sailor, a voyage was to him the best of 
hoHdays, invigorating the body and refreshing 
the brain. 

Froude was already at work on the reign of 
Elizabeth, and in March, 1861, he went to Spain 
for two months. This was the occasion of his 
earliest visit to Simancas, where he was allowed 
free access to the diplomatic correspondence 
and other records there collected and kept. The 



ii6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

advantage to Froude of these documents, especi- 
ally the despatches from the Spanish Ambassadors 
in London to the Government at Madrid, was 
enormous, and it is from them that the last 
volumes of the History derive their pecuHar value. 
He used his opportunities to the utmost, and his 
bulky, voluminous transcripts may be seen at the 
British Museum. His plan was to take rooms at 
Valladolid, from which he drove to Simancas, a 
wretched little village, and worked for the day. 
The unpublished materials which he found at 
his disposal were such as scarcely any historian 
had ever enjoyed before. 

A few months after his return to England, on 
the I2th of September, 1861, he married his second 
wife, Henrietta Warre. Miss Warre, who had 
been his first wife's intimate friend, was exactly 
suited to him, and their union was one of perfect 
happiness. So long as he was editor of Fraser, 
Froude felt it his duty to write pretty regularly 
for it, so that his hands were constantly full. 
But of course his main business for the next 
ten years was the continuation of his History, 
which involved frequent visits to Simancas, as 
well as many to the British Museum, the Record 
Office, and Hatfield House. 

From the Marquess of Salisbury, father of the 
late Prime Minister, Froude received permission 
to search the Cecil papers at Hatfield, which, 
though less numerous than those in the Record 
Ofhce, are invaluable to students of Elizabeth's 



THE HISTORY 117 

reign. His investigations at Hatfield were begun 
in April, 1862, and led, among other consequences, 
to one of his most valued friendships. With 
Lady Salisbury, afterwards Lady Derby, he 
kept up for more than thirty years a corre- 
spondence which only ended with his death. It 
was Froude who introduced Lady Salisbury to 
Carlyle, and she thoroughly appreciated the 
genius of both. Her intimate knowledge of 
politics was completed when Lord Derby sat in 
Disraeli's Cabinet. But she was always behind 
the scenes, and it was from her that Froude 
obtained most of his political information. Their 
earliest communications, however, referred to the 
Ehzabethan part of the History, especially to 
the career and influence of William Cecil, Lord 
Burghley. A preliminary letter shows the thor- 
oughness of Froude's methods. The date is the 
5th of March, 1862. 

" Dear Lady Salisbury, — If Lord SaUsbury has 
not repented of his kind promise to me, I shall 
in a few weeks be in a condition to avail myself 
of it, and I write to ask you whether about the 
beginning of next month I may be permitted to 
examine the papers at Hatfield. I am unwilhng 
to trouble Lord Salisbury more than necessary. 
I have therefore examined every other collection 
within my reach first, that I might know clearly 
what I wanted. Obhged as I am to confine myself 
for the present to the first ten years of EHzabeth's 



ii8 



LIFE OF FROUDE 



reign, there will not be much which I shall have 
to examine there, the great bulk of Lord Burleigh's 
papers for that time being in the Record Office — 
but if I can be allowed a few days' work, I 
beheve I can turn them to good account. With 
my very best thanks for your own and Lord 
SaHsbury's goodness in this matter, I remain, 
faithfully yours, 

"J. A. Froude." 



A few days later he writes : "I have seen 
Stewart and looked through the catalogue. There 
appear to be about eight volumes which I wish 
to examine. The volumes which I marked as 
containing matter at present important to me are 
Vols. 2 and 3 on the war with France and Scotland 
from 1559 to 1563, Vols. 138, 152, 153, 154, 155 
on the disputes relating to the succession to the 
English Crown, and the respective claims of the 
Queen of Scots, Lady Catherine Grey, Lord 
Darnley, and Lady Margaret Lennox. I noted the 
volumes only. I did not take notice of the pages 
because as far as I could see the volumes appeared 
to be given up to special subjects, and I should 
wish therefore to read them through." 

His growing admiration for Cecil appears in the 
following extracts : 

" I could only do real justice to such a collection 
by being allowed to read through the whole of 
it volume by volume — and for such a large 
permission as that I fear it may be dangerous 



THE HISTORY 119 

to ask. Lord Salisbury, however, whatever my 
faults may be, could find no one who has a more 
genuine admiration for his ancestor." 

October 16th, 1864. — " I cannot say beforehand 
the papers which I wish to examine, as I cannot 
tell what the collection may contain. My object 
is to have everything which admits of being learnt 
about the period — especially what may throw 
light on Lord Burleigh's character. He, it is 
more and more clear to me, was the solitary author 
of EHzabeth's and England's greatness." 

" I shall return from Simancas," he writes from 
Valladolid, " more a Cecil maniac than ever. In 
the Duke of Norfolk's conspiracy, the Queen seems 
to have fairly given up the reins to him. It is 
impossible to read the correspondence between 
PhiHp, Alva, the Pope, the Duke of Norfolk, and 
the Queen of Scots, the deliberate arrangements 
for EHzabeth's murder, without shivering to think 
how near a chance it was. Cecil was the one only 
man they feared, and the skill with which he dug 
mines below theirs, and pulled the strings of the 
whole of Europe against them, was truly splendid. 
EHzabeth had lost her head with it all, but she 
knew it and did not interfere. There are a great 
many letters of the Queen of Scots at Simancas, 
some of them of the deepest interest. She remains 
the same as I have always thought her — brilliant, 
cruel, ruthless, and perfectly unfeeling." 

Although Fronde's admiration for Elizabeth 
steadily diminished with the progress of his 



120 LIFE OF FROUDE 

researches, even students of his History will be 
surprised by such a verdict as this : 

" I am slowly drawing to the end of my long 
journey through the Records. By far the largest 
part of Burghley's papers is here [in the Record 
Office], and not at Hatfield. The private letters 
which passed between him and Walsingham about 
Elizabeth have destroyed finally the prejudice 
that still clung to me that, notwithstanding her 
many faults, she was a woman of ability. Evi- 
dently in their opinion she had no ability at all 
worth calling by the name." 

Two or three extracts will complete the part of 
this correspondence which deals with the com- 
position of the History. " I have been incessantly 
busy in the Record Office since my return to 
London. The more completely I examine the 
MSS. elsewhere the better use I shall be able to 
make of yours. I have still two months of this 
kind before me, and my intention, if you did 
not yourself write to me first, was to ask you to 
let me go to Hatfield for a week or two about 
Easter." 

" I am now sufficiently master of the story 
to be able to make very good (I daresay complete) 
use of the Hatfield papers in my present condition. 
I feel as if there were very few dark places left in 
Queen Elizabeth's proceedings anywhere. I sub- 
stantially end, in a blaze of fireworks, with the 
Armada. The concentrated interest of the reign 
lies in the period now under my hands. It is 



THE HISTORY 121 

all action, and I shall use my materials badly if 
I cannot make it as interesting as a novel." 

Nothing was neglected by Froude which could 
throw light upon the splendid and illustrious 
Queen who raised England from the depths of 
degradation to the height of renown. It was 
at the zenith of Elizabeth's career that Froude 
stopped. His original intention had been to 
continue till her death. But the ample scale 
on which he had planned his book was so much 
enlarged by his copious quotations from the 
manuscripts at Simancas that by the time he 
reached his eleventh volume he substituted 
for the death of Elizabeth on his title-page 
the defeat of the Armada. With the year 
1588, then, he closed his labours. Even the 
perverse critics who had assumed to treat the 
History of Henry VIII. as an anti-ecclesiastical 
pamphlet were compelled to show more respect 
for volumes which gave so much novel information 
to the world. Moreover Henry's daughter was 
a very different person from her father. Scandal 
about Queen Elizabeth had been chiefly confined 
to Roman Catholics, and few Enghshmen had 
forgotten who made England the mistress of the 
seas. The old rehgion had a strong fascination 
for her, and every one knows how she interrupted 
Dean Nowell when he preached against images. 
She declined to be the head of the Church in the 
sense arrogated by Henry, and yet she would by 
no means admit the supremacy of the Pope. If 



122 LIFE OF FROUDE 

she ever felt any inclination towards Rome, the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew checked it for ever. 
Gregory XIII. and Catherine de Medici were not 
rulers to her taste. On the other hand she 
resisted the persecuting tendencies of her own 
Bishops, and spared the life even of such a wretch 
as Bonner. It is possible that she believed in 
transubstantiation. It is certain that she objected 
to the marriage of the clergy, and showed scant 
courtesy to the wife of her own favourite Arch- 
bishop Parker. Nor would she suffer the Bishops, 
except as Peers, to meddle in affairs of State. A 
magnificent princess, every inch a queen, she could 
not forget that the English people had saved her 
life from the clutches of her sister, and it was for 
them, not for any Minister, courtier, or lover, that 
she really cared. 

Froude was no idolater of Elizabeth, and he 
became more unfavourable to her as he proceeded. 
He dwells minutely upon all her intrigues, in 
which she was as petty as in great matters she 
was grand. For her rival, Mary Stuart, he 
had neither respect nor mercy. To her intellect 
indeed, which was quite on a par with Elizabeth's, 
he does full justice. But neither her beauty nor 
her wit, neither her scholarship nor her statesman- 
ship, neither her passion nor her courage, could 
blind him to her selfishness, her immorality, and 
the fact that she represented the Catholic cause. 
His account of her execution certainly lacks senti- 
ment, and Mrs. Norton accused him of writing like 



THE HISTORY 123 

a disappointed lover. His sympathies are with 
John Knox, and the Regent Murray, and Mait- 
land of Lethington. But the man who beheves 
that Mary was not concerned in the murder of her 
husband will believe anything, even that she did 
not reward the murderer of her brother, or that 
she would have spared Elizabeth if Elizabeth 
had been in her power. And at least Froude 
does not, like some more modern writers, degrade 
her to the level of a kitchen wench. Froude' s 
Elizabeth was the subject of bitter, hostile, some- 
times violent, criticism in The Saturday Review^ 
the property of an ardent High Churchman, 
Beresford Hope. In the next chapter I shall 
deal with these articles at more length. It is 
enough to say here that they were directed not 
merely at Froude' s accuracy as an historian, but 
at his truthfulness as a man, suggesting that the 
mode in which he had manipulated authorities 
accessible to every one threw grave doubts 
upon his version of what he read at Simancas. 
Froude knew very well that he should make 
enemies. His belief that history had been cleri- 
calised, and required to be laicised, was regarded 
as peculiarly offensive in one who had been 
himself ordained. 

Mary Stuart, moreover, had stalwart champions 
beyond the border who were neither clerical nor 
ecclesiastical. " I fear," Froude wrote on the 22nd 
of May, 1862, to his Scottish friend Skelton, who 
was himself much interested in the subject — " I 



124 LIFE OF FROUDE 

fear my book will bring all your people about 
my ears. Mary Stuart, from my point of view, 
was something between Rachel and a pantheress." 
The success of the History had been long since 
assured, and each successive pair of volumes met 
with a cordial welcome. Many people disagreed 
with Froude on many points. He expected dis- 
agreement, and did not mind it. But no one 
could fail to see the evidence of patient, thorough 
research which every chapter, almost every page, 
contains. Indeed, it might be said with justice, 
or at least with some plausibility, that the long 
and frequent extracts from the despatches of 
De Feria, de Quadra, de Silva, and Don Guereau, 
successively Ambassadors from Philip to Eliza- 
beth, water-log the book, and make it too like a 
series of extracts with explanatory comments. 
Of Froude' s own style there could not be two 
opinions. His bitterest antagonists were forced 
to admit that it was the perfection of easy, grace- 
ful narrative, without the majestic splendour of 
Gibbon, but also without the mechanical hardness 
of Macaulay. Froude did not stop deliberately, 
as other historians have stopped, to paint pictures 
or draw portraits, and there are few writers from 
whom it is more dif&cult to make typical or 
characteristic extracts. Yet, as I have already 
quoted from his account of Cranmer's execution, 
it may not be inappropriate that I should cite 
some of the thoughts suggested to him by the 
death of Knox. Morton's epitaph is well known. 



THE HISTORY 125 

" There lies one," said the Earl over the coffin, 
" who never feared the face of mortal man." 
" Morton/' says Froude, " spoke only of what he 
knew ; the full measure of Knox's greatness 
neither he non any man could then estimate. It 
is as we look back over that stormy time, and 
weigh the actors in it one against the other, that 
he stands out in his full proportions. No grander 
figure can be found, in the entire history of the 
Reformation in this island, than that of Knox. 
Cromwell and Burghley rank beside him for the 
work which they effected, but, as politicians and 
statesmen, they had to labour with instruments 
which soiled their hands in touching them. In 
purity, in uprightness, in courage, truth and 
stainless honour, the Regent and Latimer were 
perhaps his equals ; but Murray was intellectually 
far below him and the sphere of Latimer's influence 
was on a smaller scale. The time has come when 
English history may do justice to one but for 
whom the Reformation would have been over- 
thrown among ourselves ; for the spirit which 
Knox created saved Scotland ; and if Scotland 
had been Catholic again, neither the wisdom of 
Ehzabeth's Ministers, nor the teaching of her 
Bishops, nor her own chicaneries, would have 
preserved England from revolution. His was the 
voice that taught 'the peasant of the Lothians 
that he was a free man, the equal in the sight 
of God with the proudest peer or prelate that had 
trampled on his forefathers. He was the one 



126 LIFE OF FROUDE 

antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften 
nor Maitland deceive. He it was who had raised 
the poor commons of his country into a stern 
and rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, 
superstitious and fanatical, but who nevertheless 
were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest 
could force again to submit to tyranny. And 
his reward has been the ingratitude of those who 
should have done most honour to his memory." 

The spirit of this fine passage may be due to the 
great Scotsman with whom Froude's name will 
always be inseparably associated. But Froude 
knew the subject as Carlyle did not pretend to 
know it, and his verdict is as authoritative as it 
is just. It is knowledge, even more than brilliancy, 
that these twelve volumes evince. Froude had 
mastered the sixteenth century as Macaulay 
mastered the seventeenth, with the same minute, 
patient industry. When he came to write he 
wrote with such apparent facility that those who 
did not know the meaning of historical research 
thought him shallow and superficial. 

The period during which Froude was studying 
the reign of Elizabeth must be pronounced the 
happiest of his life. He was a born historian, 
and loved research. He had opportunities of 
acquiring knowledge opened to no one before, and 
it concerned those events which above all others 
attracted him. His second wife was the most 
sympathetic of companions, thoroughly under- 
standing all his moods. She was fond of society, 



THE HISTORY 127 

and induced him to frequent it. Froude was 
disinclined to go out in the evening, and would, 
if he had been left to himself, have stayed at home. 
He wrote to Lady Salisbury : '^ I must trust to 
your kindness to make allowance for my old- 
fashioned ways. I am so much engaged in the 
week that I give my Sunday evenings to my 
children, and never go out." But when he was in 
company he talked better than almost any one 
else, and he had a magnetic power of fascination 
which men as well as women often found quite 
irresistible. Living in London, he saw people of 
all sorts, and the puritan sternness which lay at 
the root of his character was concealed by the 
cynical humour which gave zest to his conversation. 
He had not forgotten his native county, and in 
1863 he took a house at Salcombe on the 
southern coast of Devonshire. Ringrone, which 
he rented from Lord Kingsale, is a beautiful 
spot, now a hotel, then remote from railways, 
and an ideal refuge for a student. " We have a 
sea like the Mediterranean," he tells Skelton, 
" and estuaries beautiful as Loch Fyne, the green 
water washing our garden wall, and boats and 
mackerel." Froude worked there, however, be- 
sides yachting, fishing, and shooting. 

In 1864, for instance, he " floundered all the 
summer among the extinct mine-shafts of Scotch 
politics — the most damnable set of pitfalls mortal 
man was ever set to blunder through in the 
dark." His study opened on the garden, from 



128 LIFE OF FROUDE 

which the sea-view is one of the finest in Eng- 
land. Froude loved Devonshire folk, and enjoyed 
talking to them in their own dialect, or smoking 
with them on the shore. He was particularly 
fond of the indignant expostulation of a poor 
woman whose husband had been injured by his 
own chopper, and obliged in consequence to keep 
his bed. If, she said, it had been '* a visitation 
of Providence, or the like of that there," he would 
have borne it patiently. " But to come upon a 
man in the wood-house " was not in the fitness of 
things. Froude' s favourite places of worship in 
London were Westminster Abbey during Dean 
Stanley's time, and afterwards the Temple Church, 
as may be gathered from his Short Study on the 
Templars. In Devonshire he frequented an old- 
fashioned church where stringed instruments were 
stiU played, and was much delighted with the 
remark of a fiddler which he overheard. " Who 
is the King of glory ? " had been given out 
as the anthem. While the fiddles were tuning up 
a voice was heard to say : " Hand us up the 
rosin, Tom ; us' 11 soon tell them who's the King 
of glory." 

As an editor Froude was tolerant and 
catholic. " On controverted points," he said, 
" I approve myself of the practice of the 
Reformation. When St. Paul's Cross pulpit 
was occupied one Sunday by a Lutheran, the 
next by a Catholic, the next by a Calvinist, all 
sides had a hearing, and the preachers knew 



THE HISTORY 129 

that they would be pulled up before the same 
audience for what they might say." His own 
literary judgments were rather conventional. 
The mixture of classes in Clough's Bothie dis- 
turbed him. The genius of Matthew Arnold he 
had recognised at once, but then Arnold was 
a classical, academic poet. About Tennyson he 
agreed with the rest of the world, while Tenny- 
son, who was a personal friend, paid him the 
great compliment of taking from him the subject 
of a poem and the material of a play. His 
prejudice against Browning's style, much as he 
liked Browning himself, was hard to overcome, 
and on this point he had a serious difference 
with his friend Skelton. *' Browning's verse ! " 
he exclaims. " With intellect, thought, power, 
grace, all the charms in detail which poetry 
should have, it rings after all like a bell of 
lead." This was in 1863, when Browning had 
published Men and Women, and Dramatic Lyrics. 
However, he admitted Skelton' s article on the 
other side, and added, with magnificent candour, 
that " to this generation Browning's poetry is as 
uninteresting as Shakespeare's Sonnets were to 
the last century." The most fervent Browningite 
could have said no more than that. To Mr. 
Swinburne's Poems and Ballads Froude was con- 
spicuously fair. There was much in them which 
offended his Puritanism, but he was disgusted 
with the virulence of the critics, and he allowed 
Skelton to write in Fraser a qualified apology. 

Us 10) Q 



130 LIFE OF FROUDE 

" The Saturday Review temperament," he wrote, 
" is ten thousand thousand times more damnable 
than the worst of Swinburne's skits. Modern re- 
spectabihty is so utterly without God, faith, heart ; 
it shows so singular an ingenuity in assailing 
and injuring everything that is noble and good, 
and so systematic a preference for what is mean 
and paltry, that I am not surprised at a young 
fellow dashing his heels into the face of it. . . . 
When there is any kind of true genius, we have 
no right to drive it mad. We must deal with 
it wisely, justly, fairly." ^ 

Froude was an excellent editor ; appreciative, 
discriminating, and alert. He prided himself on 
Carlyle's approval, though perhaps Carlyle was 
not the best judge of such things. His energy 
was multifarious. Besides his History and his 
magazine, he found time for a stray lecture at 
odd times, and he could always reckon upon 
a good audience. His discourse at the Royal 
Institution in February, 1864, on " The Science of 
History," for which he was " called an atheist," 
is in the main a criticism of Buckle, the one 
really scientific historian. According to Buckle, 
the history of mankind was a natural growth, 
and it was only inadequate knowledge of the past 
that made the impossibility of predicting the 
future. Great men were like small men, obeying 
the same natural laws, though a trifle more 
erratic in their behaviour. Political economy was 

1 Table Talk of Shirley, p. 137. 



THE HISTORY 131 

history in little, illustrating the regularity of 
human, like all other natural, forces. But can 
we predict historical events, as we can predict 
an eclipse ? That is Fronde's answer to Buckle, 
in the form of a question. 

" Gibbon believed that the era of conquerors 
was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of 
man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of 
Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the 
world had grown too civilised for war, and the 
Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inaugura- 
tion of a new era. Battles, bloody as Napoleon's, 
are now the familiar tale of every day ; and the 
arts which have made the greatest progress are 
the arts of destruction." It is difficult to see the 
atheism in all this, but the common sense is plain 
enough. Froude belonged to the school of literary 
historians, such as were Thucydides and Tacitus, 
Gibbon and Finlay, not to the school of Buckle, 
or, as we should now say, of Professor Bury. 

In 1865 Froude removed from Clifton Place, 
Hyde Park, to Onslow Gardens in South Kensing- 
ton, where he lived for the next quarter of a 
century. In 1868 the students of St. Andrews 
chose him to be Lord Rector of the University, 
and on the 23rd of March, 1869, he delivered 
his Inaugural Address on Education, which 
compared the plain living and high thinking 
of the Scottish Universities with the expen- 
sive and luxurious idleness that he remembered 
at Oxford. Froude was dehghted with the 



132 LIFE OF FROUDE 

compliment the students had paid him, and they 
were equally charmed with their Rector. In fact, 
his visit to St. Andrews produced in 1869 a sugges- 
tion that he should become the ParHamentary 
representative of that University and of Edin- 
burgh. But the injustice of the law as it then 
stood disquahfied him as a candidate. His 
deacon's orders, the shadowy remnant of a mis- 
taken choice, stood in his way. Next year, in 
1870, Bouverie's Act passed, and Froude was one 
of the first to take advantage of it by becoming 
again, what he had really never ceased to be, a 
layman. As he did not enter the House of Com- 
mons, it is idle to speculate on what might have 
been his political career. Probably it would have 
been undistinguished. He was not a good speaker, 
and he was a bad party man. His butler, who had 
been long with him, and knew him well, was once 
asked by a canvassing agent what his master's 
politics were. " Well," he said reflectively, " when 
the Liberals are in, Mr. Froude is sometimes a 
Conservative. When the Conservatives are in, 
Mr. Froude is always a Liberal." His own master, 
Carlyle, had been in early life an ardent reformer, 
and had hoped great things from the Act of 1832. 
Perhaps he did not know very clearly what he 
expected. At any rate he was disappointed, and, 
though he wrote an enthusiastic letter to Peel after 
the abohtion of the Corn Laws, he regarded the 
Reform Act of 1867 with indignant disgust. 
Froude had a fitful and uncertain admiration 



THE HISTORY 133 

for Disraeli. Gladstone he never liked or trusted, 
and did not take the trouble to understand. He 
had been brought up to despise oratory, he had 
caught from Carlyle a horror of democracy, he 
dishked the Anglo-Catholic party in the Church 
of England, and Gladstone's financial genius was 
out of his line. The Liberal Government of 1868 
was in his opinion criminally indifferent to the 
Colonies. An earnest advocate of Federation, he 
did not see that the best way of retaining colonial 
loyalty was to preserve colonial independence 
intact. Nevertheless Froude was a pioneer of 
the modern movement, still in progress, for a 
closer union with the scattered parts of the British 
Empire. He feared that the Colonies would go 
if some effort were not made to retain them, and 
he turned over in his mind the various means of 
building up a federal system. Although Canadian 
Federation was emphatically Canadian in its origin, 
and had been adopted in principle by Cardwell 
during the Government of Lord Russell, it was 
Lord Carnarvon who carried it out, and he had 
no warmer supporter than Froude. 

Of Froude' s favourite recreations at this time 
the best account is to be found in his two Short 
Studies on A Fortnight in Kerry. From 1868 to 
1870 he rented from Lord Lansdowne a place 
called Derreen, thirty-six miles from Killarney, and 
seventeen from Kenmare, where he spent the best 
part of the summer and autumn. If Froude did 
not altogether understand the Irish people, at 



134 LIFE OF FROUDE 

least the Irish CathoHcs, and had no sympathy 
with their pohtical aspirations, he loved their 
humour, and the scenery of " the most beautiful 
island in the world " had been familiar to him from 
his early manhood. In one of his youthful rambles 
he had been struck down by small-pox, and nursed 
with a devotion which he never forgot.^ Yet 
between him and the Celt, as between him and 
the Catholic, there was a mysterious, impassable 
barrier. They had not the same fundamental 
ideas of right and wrong. They did not in very 
truth worship the same God. But of Froude and 
the Irish I shall have to speak more at length 
hereafter. In Kerry he enjoyed himself, while at 
the same time he finished his History of England, 
and his description of the country is enchanting. 

" A glance out of the window in the morning 
showed that I had not overrated the general charm 
of the situation. The colours were unlike those of 
any mountain scenery to which I was accustomed 
elsewhere. The temperature is many degrees 
higher than that of the Scotch highlands. The 
Gulf Stream impinges full upon the mouths of its 
long bays. Every tide carries the flood of warm 
water forty miles inland, and the vegetation con- 
sequently is rarely or never checked by frost even 
two thousand feet above the sea-level. Thus the 
mountains have a greenness altogether peculiar, 
stretches of grass as rich as water-meadows 
reaching between the crags and precipices to the 

1 See p, 35. 



THE HISTORY 135 

very summits. The rock, chiefly old red sand- 
stone, is purple. The heather, of which there are 
enormous masses, is in many places waist deep." 
Yachting and fishing, fishing and yachting, were 
the staple amusements at Derreen. Nothing was 
more characteristic of Froude than his love of the 
sea and the open air. Sport, in the proper sense 
of the term, he also loved. ^^ I always consider," 
he said, ^' that the proudest moment of my life was, 
when sliding down a shale heap, I got a right and 
left at woodcocks." For luxurious modes of making 
big bags with little trouble he never cared at all. 
But let him once more explain himself in his own 
words. '* I delight in a mountain walk when I must 
work hard for my five brace of grouse. I see no 
amusement in dawdling over a lowland moor where 
the packs are as thick as chickens in a poultry-yard. 
I like better than most things a day with my own 
dogs in scattered covers, when I know not what 
may rise — a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe 
in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard 
or a teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when 
the mistress of the house takes an interest in the 
bag. I detest battues and hot corners, and 
slaughter for slaughter's sake. I wish every 
tenant in England had his share in amusements 
which in moderation are good for us all, and was 
allowed to shoot sugh birds or beasts as were bred 
on his own farm, any clause in his lease to the 
contrary notwithstanding." Considering that this 
passage was written ten years before the Ground 



136 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Game Act, it must be admitted that the sentiment 
is remarkably Hberal. The chief interest of these 
papers/ however, is not poHtical, but personal. 
They show what Froude's natural tastes were, the 
tastes of a sportsman and a country gentleman. 
He had long outgrown the weakness of his boyhood, 
and his physical health was robust. With a firm 
foot and a strong head he walked freely over 
cHffs where a false step would have meant a fall 
of a thousand feet. No man of letters was ever 
more devoted to exercise and sport. Though 
subject, like most men, and all editors, to fits of 
despondency, he had a sound mind in a healthy 
frame, and his pessimism was purely theoretical. 

Froude's History, the great work of his life, was 
completed in 1870. He deliberately chose, after the 
twelve volumes, to leave Elizabeth at the height 
of her power, mistress of the seas, with Spain 
crushed at her feet. As he says himself, in the 
opening paragraph of his own Conclusion, " Chess- 
players, when they have brought their game to a 
point at which the result can be foreseen with cer- 
tainty, regard their contest as ended, and sweep the 
pieces from the board." Froude had accomplished 
his purpose. He had rewritten the story of the 
Reformation. He had proved that the Church of 
England, though in a sense it dated from St. 
Austin of Canterbury, became under Henry VHI. 
a self-contained institution, independent of Rome 
and subject to the supremacy of the Crown. 

^ Short Studies, vol. ii. pp. 217-308. 



THE HISTORY 137 

Elizabeth altered the form of words in which her 
father had expressed his ecclesiastical authority ; 
but the substance was in both cases the same. 
The sovereign was everything. The Bishop of 
Rome was nothing. There has never been in the 
Church of England since the divorce of Katharine 
any power to make a Bishop without the authority 
of the Crown, or to change a doctrine without the 
authority of Parliament, nor has any layman been 
legally subject to temporal punishment by the 
ecclesiastical courts. Convocation cannot touch 
an article or a formulary. King, Lords, and 
Commons can make new formularies or aboUsh 
the old. The laity owe no allegiance to the 
Canons, and in every theological suit the final 
appeal is to the King in Council, now the Judicial 
Committee. Since the accession of Elizabeth 
divine service has been performed in English, and 
the English Bible has been open to every one who 
can read. Yet there are people who talk as if 
the Reformation meant nothing, was nothing, 
never occurred at all. This theory, like the 
shallow sentimentalism which made an innocent 
saint and martyr of Mary Stuart, has never re- 
covered from the crushing onslaught of Froude. 

Mr. Swinburne in the Encyclopcedia Britannica 
reduces the latter theory to an absurdity by de- 
monstrating that if Mary was innocent she was 
a fool. In his defence of Elizabeth Froude stops 
short of many admirers. He was disgusted by 
her feminine weakness for masculine flattery ; he 



138 LIFE OF FROUDE 

dwells with almost tedious minuteness upon her 
smallest intrigues ; he exposes her parsimonious 
ingratitude to her dauntless and unrivalled seamen. 
Yet for all that he brings out the vital difference 
between her and Mary Tudor, between the Pro- 
testant and Catholic systems of government. 
Elizabeth boasted, and boasted truly, that she 
did not persecute opinion. If people were good 
citizens and loyal subjects, it was all the same 
to her whether they went to church or to mass. 
Had it been possible to adopt and apply in the 
sixteenth century the modern doctrine of con- 
temptuous indifference to sectarian quarrels, there 
was not one of her subjects more capable of appre- 
ciating and acting upon it than the great Queen 
herself. But in that case she would have estranged 
her friends without conciliating her opponents. 
She would have forfeited her throne and her Hfe. 
Pius V. had not merely excommunicated her, 
which was a barren and ineffective threat, a telum 
imbelle sine ictu ; he had also purported to depose 
her as a heretic, and to release her subjects from 
the duty of allegiance. Another Vicar of Christ, 
Gregory XIIL, went farther. He intimated, not 
obscurely, that whosoever removed such a monster 
from the world would be doing God's service. 
This at least was no idle menace. Those great 
leaders of Protestantism in Europe, Coligny, 
Murray, William the Silent, were successively 
murdered within a few years. That was, as Era 
Paolo said when he saw the dagger (stilus) which 



THE HISTORY 139 

had wounded him, the style (stylus) of the Roman 
Court. It is all very well to say that Gregory was 
a blasphemous, murderous old bigot, and might 
have been left to the God of justice and mercy, 
who would deal with him in His own good time. 
Before that tiAie came, Elizabeth might have been 
in her grave, Mary Stuart might have been on 
the English throne, and the liberties of England 
might have been as the liberties of Spain. 

Elizabeth never felt personal fear. But she 
was not a private individual. She was an 
English sovereign, and the keynote of all her 
subtle, intricate, tortuous policy was the resolute 
determination, from which she never flinched, 
that England should be independent, spiritually as 
well as politically independent, of a foreign yoke. 
Her connection with the Protestants was political, 
not theological, for doctrinally she was farther 
from Geneva than from Rome. Her own Bishops 
she despised, not unjustly, as time-servers, calling 
them " doctors," not prelates. Although she did 
not really believe that any human person, or 
any human formula, was required between the 
Almighty and His creatures, she preferred the 
mass and the breviary to the Book of Common 
Prayer. The Inquisition was the one part of the 
Catholic system which she really abhorred. For 
the first twenty years of her reign mass was 
celebrated in private houses with impunity, 
though to celebrate it was against the law. No 
part of her policy is more odious to modern 



140 LIFE OF FROUDE 

notions of tolerance and enlightenment than pro- 
hibition of the mass. Nothing shows more clearly 
the importance of understanding the mental atmo- 
sphere of a past age before we attempt to judge 
those who lived in it. Even Oliver Cromwell, 
fifty years after Elizabeth's death, declared that 
he would not tolerate the mass, and in general 
principles of religious freedom he was far ahead 
of his age. Cromwell no doubt, unlike Elizabeth, 
was a Protestant in the religious sense. But that 
was not his reason. The mass to him, and still 
more to Elizabeth, was a definite symbol of 
political disaffection. It was a rallying point for 
those who held that a heretical sovereign had no 
right to reign, and might lawfully be deposed, 
if not worse. Between the Catholics of our day 
and the Catholics of Elizabeth's time there is a 
great gulf fixed. What has fixed it is a question 
too complex to be discussed in this place. Catho- 
lics still revere the memory of Carlo Borromeo, 
Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, who gave his 
blessing to Campian and Parsons on their way 
to stir up rebellion in England, as well as in 
Ireland, and to assassinate Elizabeth if oppor- 
tunity should serve. God said, " Thou shalt 
do no murder." The Pope, however, thought 
that God had spoken too broadly, and that some 
qualification was required. The sixth command- 
ment could not have been intended for the protec- 
tion of heretics ; and the Jesuits, if they did not 
inspire, at least believed him. Campian is regarded 



THE HISTORY 141 

by thousands of good men and women, who would 
not hurt a fly, as a martyr to the faith, and to 
the faith as he conceived it he was a martyr. He 
endured torture and death without flinching 
rather than acknowledge that Elizabeth was 
lawful sovereign over the whole English realm. 
His courage was splendid. There never, for the 
matter of that, was a braver man than Guy Fawkes. 
But when Campian pretended that his mission 
to England was purely religious he was tampering 
with words in order to deceive. To him the 
removal of Elizabeth would have been a religious 
act. The Queen did all she could to make him 
save his life by recantation, even applying the 
cruel and lawless machinery of the rack. If his 
errand had been merely to preach what he regarded 
as Catholic truth, she would have let him go, 
as she checked the persecuting tendencies of her 
Bishops over and over again. But it was as much 
her duty to defend England from the invasion of 
the Jesuits as to defend her from the invasion 
of the Spanish Armada. Both indeed were parts 
of one and the same enterprise, the forcible 
reduction of England to dependence upon the 
Catholic powers. Although in God's good provi- 
dence it was foiled, it very nearly succeeded ; and 
if EHzabeth had not removed Campian, Campian 
might, as Babington certainly would, have removed 
her. 

The Pope had been directly concerned in the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew, and his great ally. 



142 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Philip 11. , is said to have laughed for the first 
time when he heard of it. More than a hundred 
years afterwards the pious Bossuet thanked God 
for the frightful slaughter of the Huguenots 
which followed the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes. While Mary Tudor burnt poor 
and humble persons who could be no possible 
danger to the State because they would not 
renounce the only form of Christian faith 
they had ever known, Elizabeth executed for 
treason powerful and influential men sent by 
the Pope to kill her. When, after many long 
years, she reluctantly consented to Mary Stuart's 
death on the scaffold, Mary had been implicated 
in a plot to take her life and succeed her as 
queen. Mary would have made much shorter 
work of her. If that is called persecution, the 
word ceases to have any meaning. 

Froude quotes with approval, as well he might, 
the words of Campian's admiring biographer 
Richard Simpson, himself a Catholic, a most 
learned and accomplished man. *' The eternal 
truths of Catholicism were made the vehicle for 
opinions about the authority of the Holy See 
which could not be held by Englishmen loyal to 
the Government ; and true patriotism united to 
a false religion overcame the true religion wedded 
to opinions that were unpatriotic in regard to 
the liberties of Englishmen, and treasonable to 
the English Government." In those days there 
was only one kind of English Government pos- 




THE HISTORY 143 

sible ; the Government of Elizabeth, Burghley, 
and Walsingham. Parhamentary Government 
did not exist. Even the right of free speech 
in the House of Commons was never recognised 
by the Queen. If the Enghsh Government had 
fallen, England would have been at the mercy 
of a Papal legate." Protestantism was synony- 
mous with patriotism, and good Catholics could 
not be good Englishmen while there was a 
heretical sovereign on the throne. After the 
Armada things were different. Spain was crushed. 
Sixtus V. was not a man to waste money, which 
he loved, in support of a losing cause. What 
Froude wrote to establish, and succeeded in 
establishing, was that between 1529 and 1588 the 
Reformation saved England from the tyranny 
of Rome and the proud foot of a Spanish 
conqueror. 

The true hero of Fronde's History is not Henry 
VIII., but Cecil, the firm, incorruptible, sagacious 
Minister who saved Elizabeth's throne, and made 
England the leading anti-Catholic country. Of a 
greater man than Cecil, John Knox, he was how- 
ever almost an idolater. He considered that Knox 
surpassed iii worldly wisdom even Maitland of 
Lethington, who was certainly not hampered by 
theological prejudice. With Puritanism itself he 
had much natural affinity, and as a determinist 
the philosophical side of Calvinism attracted 
him as strongly as it attracted Jonathan Edwards. 
Froude combined, perhaps illogically, a belief 



144 LIFE OF FROUDE 

in predestination with a deep sense of moral 
duty and the responsibihty of man. Every 
reader of his History must have been struck by 
his respect for all the manly virtues, even in 
those with whom he has otherwise no sympathy, 
and his corresponding contempt for weakness and 
self-indulgence. In his second and final Address 
to the students of St. Andrews he took Calvinism 
as his theme. ^ By this time Froude had acquired 
a great name, and was known all over the world 
as the most brilliant of living English historians. 
Although his uncompromising treatment of Mary 
Stuart had provoked remonstrance, his eulogy of 
Knox and Murray was congenial to the Scottish 
temperament, with which he had much in common. 
It was indeed from St. Andrews alone that he 
had hitherto received any public recognition. 
He was grateful to the students, and gave 
them of his best, so that this lecture may be 
taken as an epitome of his moral and religious 
belief. 

" Calvinism," he told these lads, " was the 
spirit which rises in revolt against untruth ; the 
spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared 
and reappeared, and in due time will appear 
again, unless God be a delusion and man be as 
the beasts that perish. For it is but the in- 
flashing upon the conscience with overwhelming 
force of the nature and origin of the laws by which 
mankind are governed — ^laws which exist, whether 

^ Short Studies, vol. ii. pp. 1-60. 



THE HISTORY 145 

we acknowledge them or whether we deny them, 
and will have their way, to our weal or woe, ac- 
cording to the attitude in which we please to place 
ourselves towards them — inherent, like electricity, 
in the nature of things, not made by us, not to 
be altered by \is, but to be discerned and obeyed 
by us at our everlasting peril." The essence of 
Froude's belief, not otherwise dogmatic, was a 
constant sense of God's presence and overruling 
power. Sceptical his mind in many ways was. 
The two things he never doubted, and would not 
doubt, were theism and the moral law. Without 
God there would be no religion. Without morality 
there would be no difference between right and 
wrong. This simple creed was sufficient for him, 
as it has been sufficient for some of the greatest 
men who ever lived. Epicureanism in all its forms 
was alien to his nature. " It is not true," he said 
at St. Andrews, " that goodness is synonymous 
with happiness. The most perfect being who ever 
trod the soil of this planet was called the Man of 
Sorrows. If happiness means absence of care 
and inexperience of painful emotion, the best 
securities for it are a hard heart and a good diges- 
tion. If morality has no better foundation than 
a tendency to promote happiness, its sanction is 
but a feeble uncertainty." Remembering where 
he stood, and speaking from the fulness of hib 
mind, Froude exclaimed : ** Norman Leslie did 
not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder 
because he was a Catholic, but because he was 

(§310) 10 



146 LIFE OF FROUDE 

a murderer. The Catholics chose to add to their 
already incredible creed a fresh article, that they 
were entitled to hang and burn those who differed 
from them ; and in this quarrel the Calvinists, 
Bible in hand, appealed to the God of battles." 

The importance of this striking Address is largely 
due to the fact that it was composed immediately 
after the History had been finished, and may be 
regarded as an epilogue. It breathes the spirit, 
though it discards the trappings, of Puritanism and 
the Reformation . Luther ' ' was one of the grandest 
men that ever lived on earth. Never was any 
one more loyal to the light that was in him, braver, 
truer, or wider-minded in the noblest sense of the 
word." About Calvinism Froude disagreed with 
Carlyle, who loved to use the old formulas, though 
he certainly did not use them in the old sense. 
"It is astonishing to find," Froude wrote to 
Skelton, " how little in ordinary life the Calvinists 
talked or wrote about doctrine. The doctrine 
was never more than the dress. The living crea- 
ture was wholly moral and political — so at least I 
think myself." Such language was almost enough 
to bring John Knox out of his grave. Could he 
have heard it, he would have felt that he was 
being confounded with Maitland, who thought God 
" ane nursery bogill." But though the attempt to 
represent Knox or Calvin as undogmatic may be 
fanciful, it is the purest, noblest, and most per- 
manent part of Calvinism that Froude invited the 
students of St. Andrews to cherish and preserve. 



CHAPTER V 

FROUDE AND FREEMAN 

FROUDE'S reputation as an historian was 
seriously damaged for a time by the per- 
sistent attacks of The Saturday Review. It is 
difficult for the present generation to understand 
the influence which that celebrated periodical 
exercised, or the terror which it inspired, forty 
years ago. The first editor, Douglas Cook, was 
a master of his craft, and his colleagues included 
the most brilHant writers of the day. Matthew 
Arnold, who was not one of them, paid them the 
compliment of treating them as the special 
champions of Philistia, the chosen garrison of 
Gath. On most subjects they were fairly im- 
partial, holding that there was nothing new and 
nothing true, and that if there were it wouldn't 
matter. But the proprietor ^ of the paper at that 
time was a High Churchman, and on ecclesiastical 
questions he put forward his authority. Within 
that sphere he would not tolerate either neutrahty 
or difference of opieion. To him, and to those 

' Alexander James Beresford Hope, some time member for the 
University of Cambridge. 

147 



148 LIFE OF FROUDE 

who thought Hke him, Froude's History was 
anathema. Their detested Reformation was set 
upon its legs again ; Bishop Fisher was removed 
from his pedestal ; the Church of England, which 
since Keble's assize sermon had been the Church 
of the Fathers, was shown to be Protestant in its 
character and Parliamentary in its constitution. 
The Oxford Movement seemed to be discredited, 
and that by a man who had once been enlisted 
in its service. It was necessary that the pre- 
sumptuous iconoclast should be put down, and 
taught not to meddle with things which were 
sacred. 

From the first The Saturday Review was hostile, 
but it was not till 1864 that the campaign 
became systematic. At that time the editor 
secured the services of Edward Augustus Freeman, 
who had been for several years a contributor on 
miscellaneous topics. Freeman is well known as 
the historian of the Norman Conquest, as an 
active politician, controversialist, and pamphleteer. 
Froude toiled for months and years over parch- 
ments and manuscripts often almost illegible, 
carefully noting the caligraphy, and among the 
authors of a joint composition assigning his proper 
share to each. Freeman wrote his History of the 
Norman Conquest, upon which he was at this time 
engaged, entirely from books, without consulting 
a manuscript or an original document of any kind. 
Every historian must take his own line, and the 
public a^re concerned not with processes, but with 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 149 

results. I wish merely to point out the fact that, 
as between Froude and Freeman, the assailed and 
the assailant, Froude was incomparably the more 
laborious student of the two. It would be hard to 
say that one historian should not review the work 
of another ; but we may at least expect that he 
should do so with sympathetic consideration for 
the difficulties which all historians encounter, and 
should not pass sentence until he has all the 
evidence before him. What were Freeman's quali- 
fications for delivering an authoritative judgment 
on the work of Froude ? Though not by any 
means so learned a man as his tone of conscious 
superiority induced people to suppose, he knew 
his own period very well indeed, and his acquaint- 
ance with that period, perhaps also his veneration 
for Stubbs, had given him a natural prejudice in 
favour of the Church. For the Church of the 
middle ages, the undivided Church of Christ, was 
even in its purely mundane aspect the salvation of 
society, the safeguard of law and order, the last 
restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of the 
wretched. 

Historically, if not doctrinally. Freeman was 
a High Churchman, and his ecclesiastical leanings 
were a great advantage to him in dealing 
with the eleventh century. It was far otherwise 
when he came to write of the sixteenth. If the 
Church of the sixteenth century had been like 
the Church of the eleventh century, or the twelfth, 
' or the thirteenth, there would have been no 



150 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Reformation, and no Froude. Freeman lived, and 
loved, the controversial life. Sharing Gladstone's 
politics both in Church and State, he was in 
aU secular matters a strong Liberal, and his hatred 
of Disraeli struck even Liberals as bordering on 
fanaticism. Yet his hatred of Disraeli was as 
nothing to his hatred of Froude. By nature ** so 
over-violent or over-civil that every man with 
him was God or devil," he had erected Froude into 
his demon incarnate. Other men might be, Froude 
must be, wrong. He detested Fronde's opinions. 
He could not away with his style. Freeman's own 
style was forcible, vigorous, rhetorical, hard ; the 
sort of style which Macaulay might have written 
if he had been a pedant and a professor instead 
of a politician and a man of the world. It was 
not ill suited for the blood-and-thunder sort of 
reviewing to which his nature disposed him, and 
for the vengeance of the High Churchmen he 
seemed an excellent tool. 

Freeman's biographer. Dean Stephens, pre- 
serves absolute and unbroken silence on the duel 
between Freeman and Froude. I think the Dean's 
conduct was judicious. But there is no reason 
why a biographer of Froude should follow his ex- 
ample. On the contrary, it is absolutely essential 
that he should not ; for Freeman's assiduous 
efforts, first in The Saturday, and afterwards in The 
Contemporary, Review, did ultimately produce an 
impression, never yet fuUy dispelled, that Froude 
was an habitual garbler of facts and constitu- 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 151 

tionally reckless of the truth. But, before I 
come to details, let me say one word more about 
Freeman's qualifications for the task which he so 
lightly and eagerly undertook. Freeman, with all 
his self-assertion, was not incapable of candour. 
He was staunch in friendship, and spoke openly 
to his friends. To one of them, the excellent Dean 
Hook, famous for his Lives of the Archbishops 
of Canterbury, he wrote, on the 27th of April, 
1857, " You have found me out about the sixteenth 
century. I fancy that, from endlessly belabouring 
Froude, I get credit for knowing more of those 
times than I do. But one can belabour Froude 
on a very small amount of knowledge, and you are 
quite right when you say that I have * never 
thrown the whole force of my mind on that portion 
of history.' " ^ These words pour a flood of light 
on the temper and knowledge with which Freeman 
must have entered on what he really seemed to 
consider a crusade. His object was to belabour 
Froude. His own acquaintance with the subject 
was, as he says, " very small," but sufficient 
for enabling him to dispose satisfactorily of an 
historian who had spent years of patient toil in 
thorough and exhaustive research. On another 
occasion, also writing to Hook, whom he could 
not deceive, he said, " I find I have a reputa- 
tion with some people for knowing the sixteenth 
century, of which T am profoundly ignorant." ^ 

' Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman, vol. i. p. 381. 
* Ibid. p. 382. 



152 LIFE OF FROUDE 

It does not appear to have struck him that he 
had done his best in The Saturday Review to 
make people think that, as Fronde's critic, he 
deserved the reputation which he thus frankly 
and in private disclaims. 

Another curious piece of evidence has come 
to light. After Freeman's death his library 
was transferred to Owens College, Manchester, 
and there, among his other books, is his copy 
of Froude's History. He once said himself, in 
reference to his criticism of Froude, " In truth 
there is no kind of temper in the case, but only 
a strong sense of amusement in bowling down 
one thing after another." Let us see. Here are 
some extracts from his marginal notes. "A lie, 
teste Stubbs," as if Stubbs were an authority, 
in the proper sense of the term, any more than 
Froude. Authorities are contemporary witnesses, 
or original documents. Another entry is " Beast," 
and yet another is "Bah!" '* May I live to em- 
bowel James Anthony Froude " is the pious aspira- 
tion with which he has adorned another page. 
** Can Froude understand honesty ? " asks this 
anxious inquirer ; and again, " Supposing Master 
Froude were set to break stones, feed pigs, or 
do anything else but write paradoxes, would he 
not curse his day ? " Along with such graceful 
compliments as " You've found that out since 
you wrote a book against your own father," 
** Give him as slave to Thirlwall," there may 
be seen the culminating assertion, " Froude is 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 153 

certainly the vilest brute that ever wrote a book." 
Yet there was " no kind of temper in the case," 
and " only a strong sense of amusement." I 
suppose it must have amused Freeman to call 
another historian a vile brute. But it is fortunate 
that there was no temper in the case. For if 
there had, it would have been a very bad temper 
indeed. 

In this judicial frame of mind did Freeman set 
himself to review successive volumes of Froude's 
Elizabeth. Froude did not always correct his 
proofs with mechanical accuracy, and this gave 
Freeman an advantage of which he was not slow 
to avail himself. " Mr. Froude," he says in The 
Saturday Review for the 30th of January, 1864, 
** talks of a French attack on Guienne, evidently 
meaning Guisnes. It is hardly possible that this 
can be a misprint." It was of course a misprint, 
and could hardly have been anything else. 
Guisnes was a town, and could be attacked. 
Guienne was a province, and would have been 
invaded. Guienne had been a French province 
since the Hundred Years' War, and therefore the 
French would neither have attacked nor invaded 
it. As if all this were not enough to show 
the nature and source of the error, the word was 
correctly printed in the marginal heading. In 
the same article, after quoting Froude's denial that 
a sentence described by the Spanish Ambassador 
de Silva as having been passed upon a pirate could 
have been pronounced in an English court of 



154 LIFE OF FROUDE 

justice, Freeman asked, "Is it possible that Mr. 
Froude has never heard of the peine forte et 
dure ? " Freeman of course knew it to be im- 
possible. He knew also that the peine forte et 
dure was inflicted for refusing to plead, and that 
this pirate, by de Silva's own account, had been 
found guilty. But he wanted to suggest that 
Froude was an ignoramus, and for the purpose 
of beating a dog one stick is as good as another. 

Freeman's trump card, however, was the 
Bishop of Lexovia, and that brilliant victory 
he never forgot. Froude examined the strange 
and startling allegation, cited by Macaulay in 
his introductory chapter, that during the reign 
of Henry VIII. seventy-two thousand persons 
perished by the hand of the public executioner. 
He traced it to the Commentaries of Cardan, an 
astrologer, not a very trustworthy authority, who 
had himself heard it, he said, from " an unknown 
Bishop of Lexovia . " * * Unknown,' ' observed Free- 
man, with biting sarcasm, "to no one who has 
studied the history of Julius Caesar or of Henry II." 
Froude had not been aware that Lexovia was the 
ancient name for the modern Lisieux, and for 
twenty years he was periodically reminded of the 
fact. Had he followed Freeman's methods, he 
might have asked whether his critic really supposed 
that there were bishops in the time of Julius Caesar. 
Freeman failed to see that the point was not the 
modern name of Lexovia, but the number of 
persons put to death by Henry, on which 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 155 

Froude had shown the worthlessness of popular 
tradition. 

Bishop Hooper was burnt at Gloucester in the 
Cathedral Close. Froude describes the scene of 
the execution as "an open space opposite the 
College." That shows, says Freeman, that Froude 
did not, like Macaulay, visit the scenes of the 
events he described. Perhaps he did not visit 
Gloucester, or even Guisnes. That Freeman's 
general conclusion was entirely wide of the mark 
a single letter from Froude to Skelton is enough 
to show. ** I want you some day," he wrote on 
the i2th of December, 1863, " to go with me to 
Loch Leven, and then to Stirling, Perth, and 
Glasgow. Before I go farther I must have a 
personal knowledge of Loch Leven Castle and the 
grounds at Langside. Also I must look at the 
street at Linlithgow where Murray was shot." ^ 
Thus Freeman's amiable inference was the exact 
reverse of the truth. 

Some of Freeman's methods, however, were 
a good deal less scrupulous than this. By 
way of bringing home to Froude ** ecclesias- 
tical malignity of the most frantic kind," he 
cited the case of Bishop Coxe. '* To Hatton," 
Froude wrote in his text,^ ** was given also the 
Naboth's vineyard of his neighbour the Bishop 
of Ely." In a long note he commented upon the 
Bishop's inclination to resist, and showed how 

^ Table Talk of Shirley, p. 131. 

^ History of England, vol. xi. p. 321. 



156 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the " proud prelate " was " brought to reason 
by means so instructive on EHzabeth's mode of 
conducting business when she had not Burghley 
or Walsingham to keep her in order that " the 
whole account is given at length in the words of 
Lord North, whom she employed for the purpose. 
This letter from Lord North is extremely valuable 
evidence. Froude read it and transcribed it from 
the collection of manuscripts at Hatfield. As an idle 
rumour that Froude spent only one day at Hatfield 
obtained currency after his death, it may be con- 
venient to mention here that the work which he 
did there in copying manuscripts alone must have 
occupied him at least a month. Now let us see 
what use Freeman made of the information thus 
given him by Froude. " Meanwhile," he says in 
The Saturday Review for the 22nd of January, 1870, 
"Mr. Froude is conveniently silent as to the in- 
famous tricks played by Elizabeth and her courtiers 
in order to make estates for court favourites out of 
Episcopal lands. A line or two of text is indeed 
given to the swindling transaction by which 
Bishop Coxe of Ely was driven to surrender his 
London house to Sir Christopher Hatton. But 
why ? Because the story gives Mr. Froude an 
opportunity of quoting at full length a letter from 
Lord North to the Bishop in which all the Bishop's 
real or pretended enormities are strongly set 
forth." Here follows a short extract from the 
letter, in which North accused Coxe of grasping 
covetousness. Now it is perfectly obvious to 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 157 

any one having the whole letter before him, as 
Freeman had, that Froude quoted it with the 
precisely opposite aim of denouncing the conduct 
of Elizabeth to the Bishop, whom he compares 
with Naboth. Freeman must have heard of 
Naboth. He must have known what Froude 
meant. Yet the whole effect of his comments 
must have been to make the readers of The 
Saturday Review think that Froude was attacking 
the Church, when he was attacking the Crown for 
its conduct to the Church. 

Freeman seemed to glory in his own defici- 
encies, and was almost as proud of what 
he did not know as of what he did. Thus, 
for instance, Froude, a born man of letters, 
was skilful and accomplished in the employment 
of metaphors. Freeman could no more handle 
a metaphor than he could fish with a dry fly. 
He therefore, without the smallest consciousness 
of being absurd, condemned Froude for doing 
what he was unable to do himself, and even 
wrote, in the name of The Saturday Review, " We 
are no judges of metaphors," though there must 
surely have been some one on the staff who knew 
something about them 

Froude had a mode of treating documents 
which is open to animadversion. He did not, as 
Mr. Pollard happily puts it in the Dictionary of 
National Biography, "respect the sanctity of in- 
verted commas." They ought to imply textual 
(quotation. Froude used them for his abridgments, 



158 LIFE OF FROUDE 

openly proclaiming the fact that he had abridged, 
and therefore deceiving no one. Freeman's com- 
ment upon this irregularity is extremely character- 
istic. " Now we will not call this dishonest ; we 
do not believe that Mr. Froude is intentionally 
dishonest in this or any other matter ; but then 
it is because he does not know what literary 
honesty and dishonesty are." There is no such 
thing as literary honesty, or scientific honesty, 
or political honesty. There is only one kind of 
honesty, and an honest man does not misrepresent 
an opponent, as Freeman misrepresented Froude. 
To call a man a liar is an insult. To say that he 
is not a liar because he does not know the difference 
between truth and falsehood is a cowardly insult. 
But Froude was soon avenged. Freeman gave 
himself into his adversary' s hands . * * Sometimes,' ' 
he wrote,^ "Mr. Froude gives us the means of 
testing him. Let us try a somewhat remarkable 
passage. He tells us "It had been argued in 
the Admiralty Courts that the Prince of Orange, 
' having his principality of his title in France, 
might make lawful war against the Duke of Alva,* 
and that the Queen would violate the rules of 
neutrality if she closed her ports against his 
cruisers." Then follows a Latin passage from 
which the English is paraphrased. " We pre- 
sume," continues Freeman in fancied triumph, 
" that the words put by Mr. Froude in inverted 
commas are not Lord Burghley's summary of 

^ Saturday Review, Nov. 24th, 1866. 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 159 

the Latin extract in the note^ but Mr. Fronde's 
own, for it is utterly impossible that Burghley 
could have so misconceived a piece of plain 
Latin, or have so utterly misunderstood the 
position of any contemporary prince." Pre- 
sumption indeed. I have before me a photograph 
of Burghley' s own words in his own writing 
examined by Froude at the Rolls House. They 
are " Question whether the Prince of Orange, 
being a free prince of the Empire, and also having 
his principality of his title in France, might not 
make a just war against the Duke of Alva." 
Froude abridged, and wrote " lawful " for " just." 
But the words which Freeman says that Burghley 
could not have used are the words which he did 
use, and the explanation is simple enough. Free- 
man was Freeman. Burghley was a statesman. 
Burghley of course knew perfectly well that Orange 
was not subject to the King of France, not part of 
his dominions, which is Freeman's objection. He 
called it in France because it, and the Papal 
possessions of Venaissin adjoining it, were sur- 
rounded by French territory. He called it "in 
France," as we should call the Republic of San 
Marino " in Italy " now. Freeman might have 
ascertained what Burghley did write if he had 
cared to know. He did not care to know. He 
was " belabouring Froude." 

Once Froude was weak enough to accept Free- 
man's correction on a small point, only to find 
that Freeman was entirely in error, and that he 



i6o LIFE OF FROUDE 

himself had been right all along. After much vitu- 
perative language not worth repeating, Freeman 
wrote in The Saturday Review for the 5 th of 
February, 1870, these genial words, "As it is, 
there is nothing to be done but to catch Mr. 
Froude whenever he comes from his hiding-place 
at Simancas into places in which we can lie 
in wait for him." The sneer at original research 
is characteristic of Freeman. One can almost hear 
his self-satisfied laugh as he wrote this unlucky- 
sentence, " The thing is too grotesque to talk 
about seriously ; but can we trust a single 
uncertified detail from the hands of a man who 
throughout his story of the Armada always calls 
the Ark Royal the Ark Raleigh ? . . . It is the 
sort of blunder which so takes away one's breath 
that one thinks for the time that it must be right. 
We do not feel satisfied till we have turned to 
our Camden and seen ' Ark Regis ' staring us full 
in the face." Freeman did not know the meaning 
of historical research as conducted by a real 
scholar like Froude. Froude had not gone to 
Camden, who in Freeman's eyes represented the 
utmost stretch of Elizabethan learning. If Free- 
man had had more natural shrewdness, it might 
have occurred to him that the name of a great 
seaman was not an unlikely name for a ship. But 
he could never fall lightly, and heavily indeed did 
he fall on this occasion. With almost incredible 
fatuity, he wrote, " The puzzle of guessing how 
Mr. Froude got at so grotesque a union of words 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN i6i 

as ' Ark Raleigh ' fades before the greater puzzle 
of guessing what idea he attached to the words 
' Ark Raleigh ' when he had got them together." 
When Freeman was most hopelessly wrong he 
always began to parody Macaulay. Corruptio 
optimi pessimal " Ark Raleigh " means Raleigh's 
ship, and Froude took the name, *' Ark Rawlie " 
as it was then spelt, from the manuscripts at the 
Rolls House. He was of course right, and Freeman 
was wrong. But that is not all. Freeman could 
easily have put himself right if he had chosen to 
take the trouble. Edwards's Life of Raleigh ap- 
peared in 1868, and a copy of it is in Freeman's 
library at Owens College. Edwards gives an 
account of the Ark Raleigh, which was built for 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh advancing two 
hundred pounds. Freeman, however, need not 
have read this book to find out the truth. For 
"the Ark Raleigh" occurs fourteen times in a 
Calendar of Manuscripts from 1581 to 1590, 
published by Robert Lemon in 1865. When 
Freeman was brought to book, and taxed with this 
gross blunder, he pleaded that he " did a true 
verdict give according to such evidence as came 
before him." The implied analogy is misleading. 
Jurymen are bound by their oaths, and by their 
duty, to find a verdict one way or the other. 
Freeman was under no obligation to say anything 
about the Ark Raleigh. Prudence and ignorance 
might well have restrained his pen. 

Two blots in Froude' s History Freeman may, 
(2310) II 



i62 LIFE OF FROUDE 

I think, be acknowledged to have hit. One was 
intellectual ; the other was moral. It was pure 
childishness to suggest that Froude had never 
heard of the peine forte et dure, and only invincible 
prejudice could have dictated such a sentence as 
" That Mr. Froude' s law would be queer might 
be taken as a matter of course." ^ Still, it is true, 
and a serious misfortune, that Froude took very 
little interest in legal and constitutional questions. 
For, while they had not the same importance in 
the sixteenth century as they had in the seven- 
teenth, they cannot be disregarded to the extent in 
which Froude disregarded them without detract- 
ing from the value of his book as a whole. He 
did not sit down, like Hallam, to write a con- 
stitutional history, and he could not be expected 
to deal with his subject from that special point 
of view. Freeman's complaint, which is quite 
just, was that he neglected almost entirely the 
relations of the Crown with the Houses of 
Parliament and with the courts of law. The 
moral blot accounts for a good deal of the 
indignation which Froude excited in minds far 
less jaundiced than Freeman's. No one hated 
injustice more than Froude. But cruelty as 
such did not inspire him with any horror. No 
punishment, however atrocious, seemed to him too 
great for persons clearly guilty of enormous crimes. 
I have already referred to his defence of the horrible 
Boiling Act which disgraced the reign and the 

^ ^ Saturday Review, Jan. 29th, 1870. 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 163 

Parliament of Henry VIII. The account of Mary 
Stuart's old and wizened face as it appeared when 
her false hair and front had been removed after her 
execution may be set down as an error of taste. 
But what is to be said, on the score of humanity, 
for an historian who in the nineteenth century 
calmly and in cold blood defended the use of the 
rack ? Even here Freeman's ingenuity of sug- 
gestion did not desert him. After quoting part, 
and part only, of Froude's sinister apology, he 
writes, *' To all this the answer is very simple. 
Every time that Ehzabeth and her counsellors 
sent a prisoner to the rack they committed a 
breach of the law of England." ^ Any one who 
read this article without reading the History 
would infer that Froude had maintained the 
legality, as well as the expediency, of torture. 
That is not true. What Froude says is, ** A 
practice which by the law was always forbidden 
could be palliated only by a danger so great that 
the nation had become like an army in the field. 
It was repudiated on the return of calmer times, 
and the employment of it rests a stain on the 
memory of those by whom it was used. It is 
none the less certain, however, that the danger 
was real and terrible, and the same causes which 
relieve a commander in active service from the 
restraints of the common law apply to the conduct 
of statesmen who are deahng with organised 
treason. The law is made for the nation, not the 

^ Saturday Review, Dec, ist, 1867. 



i64 LIFE OF FROUDE 

nation for the law. Those who transgress it do 
it at their own risk, but they may plead circum- 
stances at the bar of history, and have a right to 
be heard." Thus Froude asserts as strongly and 
clearly as Freeman himself that torture was in 
1580, and always had been, contrary to the law 
of England. On the purely legal and technical 
aspect of the question a point might be raised 
which neither Froude nor Freeman has attempted 
to solve. Would any Court in the reign of Eliza- 
beth have convicted a man of a criminal offence 
for carrying out the express commands of the 
sovereign ? If not, in what sense was the 
racking of the Jesuits illegal ? But there is a 
law of God, as well as a law of man, and surely 
Elizabeth broke it. Froude' s argument seems 
to prove too much, if it proves anything, for it 
would justify all the worst cruelties ever inflicted 
by tyrants for political objects, from the burning 
of Christians who refused incense for the Roman 
Emperor to 

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel. 

The analogy of a commander in active service is 
inadequate. Elizabeth, Burghley, Walsingham, 
were not commanders on active service ; and 
if they had been, they would have had no 
right, on any Christian or civilised principle, to 
torture prisoners. Unless the end justifies the 
means, in which case there is no morality, the 
rack was an abomination, and those who applied 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 165 

it to extort either confession or evidence debased 
themselves to the level of the Holy Inquisitors. 
Fronde did not, I grieve to say, stop at an apology 
for the rack. In a passage which must always dis- 
figure his book he thus describes the fate of Antony 
Babington and those who suffered with him in 1586. 

" They were all hanged but for a moment, 
according to the letter of the sentence, taken down 
while the susceptibility of agony was still unim- 
paired, and cut in pieces afterwards with due 
precautions for the protraction of the pain. If 
it was to be taken as part of the Catholic creed 
that to kill a prince in the interests of Holy Church 
was an act of piety and merit, stern English 
common sense caught the readiest means of ex- 
pressing its opinion on the character both of the 
creed and its professors." 

Stern English common sense ! To suggest that 
the English people had anything to do with it is 
a libel on the English nation. Elizabeth had the 
decency to forbid the repetition of such atrocities. 
That she should have tolerated them at all is a 
stain upon her character, as his sophistical plea 
for them is a stain upon Froude's. 

On the 12th of January, 1870, Freeman delivered 
in The Saturday Review his final verdict on 
Froude's History of England from the Fall of Wolsey 
to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. It is one of 
the most preposterous judgments that ever found 
their way into print. In knowledge of the subject, 
and in patient assiduity of research, Froude was 



i66 LIFE OF FROUDE 

immeasurably Freeman's superior, and his life had 
been devoted to historic studies. Yet this was 
the language in which the editor of the first literary 
journal in England permitted Freeman to write 
of the greatest historical work completed since 
Macaulay died: '' He has won his place among the 
popular writers of the day ; his name has come to 
be used as a figure of speech, sometimes in strange 
company with his betters. . . . But an historian 
he is not ; four volumes of ingenious paradox, eight 
volumes of ecclesiastical pamphlet, do not become 
a history, either because of the mere number of 
volumes, or because they contain a narrative which 
gradually shrinks into little more than a narrative 
of diplomatic intrigues. The main objections to 
Mr. Froude's book, the blemishes which cut it off 
from any title to the name of history, are utter 
carelessness as to facts and utter incapacity to 
distinguish right from wrong. . . . That burning 
zeal for truth, for truth in all matters great and 
small, that zeal which shrinks from no expenditure 
of time and toil in the pursuit of truth — the spirit 
without which history, to be worthy of the name, 
cannot be written — is not in Mr. Froude's nature, 
and it would probably be impossible to make him 
understand what it is. . . . How far the success 
of the book is due to its inherent vices, how far 
to its occasional virtues, is a point too knotty for 
us to solve. The general reader and his tastes — 
why this thing pleases him and the other thing 
displeases him — have ever been to us the pro- 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 167 

foundest of mysteries. It is enough that on 
Mr. Fronde's book, as a whole, the verdict of all 
competent historical scholars has long ago been 
given. Occasional beauties of style and narrative 
cannot be allowed to redeem carelessness of truth, 
ignorance of law, contempt for the first principles 
of morals, ecclesiastical malignity of the most 
frantic kind. There are parts of Mr. Froude's 
volumes which we have read with real pleasure, 
with real admiration. But the book, as a whole, 
is vicious in its conception, vicious in its execution. 
No merit of detail can atone for the hoUowness 
that runs through the whole. Mr. Froude has 
written twelve volumes, and he has made himself 
a name in writing them, but he has not written, 
in the pregnant phrase so aptly quoted by the 
Duke of Aumale, ' un livre de bonne foy.' " ^ 

By a curious irony of fate or circumstance 
Freeman has unconsciously depicted the frame of 
mind in which Froude approached historic pro- 
blems. '' That burning zeal for truth, for truth 
in all matters great and small, that zeal which 
shrinks from no expenditure of time and toil in 
the pursuit of truth — the spirit without which 
history, to be worthy of the name, cannot be 
written," was the dominant principle of Froude's 
life and work. He had hitherto taken no notice 
of the attacks in The Saturday Review. The 
errors pointed out in them were of the most 

^ The Duke was not, as Freeman implies that he was, referring 
to Froude. 



i68 LIFE OF FROUDE 

trivial kind, and mere abuse is not worth a 
reply. But even Gibbon was moved from his 
philosophic calm when Mr. Somebody of Some- 
thing " presumed to attack not the faith but 
the fidelity of the historian." Froude passed over 
in contemptuous silence impertinent reflections 
upon his religious behef. His honesty was now in 
set terms impugned, and on the 15th of February, 
1870, he addressed, through the editor of The 
Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Frederick Greenwood, a 
direct challenge to Mr. Philip Harwood, who had 
become editor of The Saturday Review. After a 
few caustic remarks upon the absurdity of 
the defects imputed to him, such as ignorance 
that Parliament could pass Bills of Attainder, 
because he had said that the House of Lords 
would not pass one in a particular case, he 
came to close quarters with the imputation of 
bad faith. '' I am," he said, " peculiarly situ- 
ated " — as Freeman of course knew — '' towards a 
charge of this kind, for nine-tenths of my docu- 
ments are in manuscript, and a large proportion 
of those manuscripts are in Spain. To deal as 
fairly as I can with the public, I have all along 
deposited my Spanish transcripts, as soon as I have 
done with them, in the British Museum. The 
reading of manuscripts, however, is at best labori- 
ous. The public may be inclined to accept as 
proved an uncontradicted charge, the value of 
which they cannot readily test. I venture there- 
fore to make the following proposal. I do not 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 169 

make it to my reviewer. He will be reluctant to 
exchange communications with me, and the dis- 
inclination will not be on his side only. I address 
myself to his editor. If the editor will select any 
part of my volumes, one hundred, two hundred, 
three hundred' pages, wherever he pleases, I am 
willing to subject them to a formal examination 
by two experts, to be chosen — if Sir Thomas Hardy 
will kindly undertake it — by the Deputy Keeper 
of the Public Records. They shall go through my 
references, line for line. They shall examine every 
document to which I have alluded, and shall judge 
whether I have dealt with it fairly. I lay no claim 
to be free from mistakes. I have worked in all 
through nine hundred volumes of letters, notes, 
and other papers, private and official, in five 
languages and in difficult handwritings. I am not 
rash enough to say that I have never misread 
a word, or overlooked a passage of importance. 
I profess only to have dealt with my materials 
honestly to the best of my ability. I submit 
myself to a formal trial, of which I am willing to 
bear the entire expense, on one condition — that 
the report, whatever it be, shall be published 
word for word in The Saturday Review'' 

The proposal was certainly a novel one, and 
could not in ordinary circumstances have been 
accepted. But it is also novel to charge an his- 
torian of the highest character and repute with 
inability to speak the truth, or to distinguish 
between truth and falsehood. Freeman, signing 



170 LIFE OF FROUDE 

himself "Mr. Froude's Saturday Reviewer/' re- 
plied in The Pall Mall Gazette. The challenge 
he left to the editor of The Saturday, who con- 
temptuously refused it, and he admitted that after 
all Froude probably did know what a Bill of 
Attainder was. The rest of his letter is a shuffle. 
" I have made no charge of bad faith against 
Mr. Froude" — whom he had accused of not 
knowing what truth meant — '* with regard to any 
Spanish manuscripts, or any other manuscripts. 
All that I say is, that as I find gross inaccuracies 
in Mr. Froude's book, which he does not specify, 
whenever I have the means of testing him " — 
which was certainly not often — '* I think there is 
a presumption against his accuracy in those parts 
where I have not the means of testing him. But 
this is only a presumption, and not proof. Mr. 
Froude may have been more careful, or more 
lucky " — meaning less fraudulent, or more skilful 
— " with the hidden wealth of Simancas than he 
has been with regard to materials which are more 
generally accessible. I trust it may prove so." 
If Freeman thought that he meant that, he must 
have had singular powers of self-deception. " I 
have been twitted by men of thought and learn- 
ing " — ^whom he does not name — ** for letting 
Mr. Froude off too easily, and I am inclined 
to plead guilty to the charge. I do not suppose 
that Mr. Froude wilfully misrepresents anything ; 
the fault seems to be inherent and incurable ; he 
does not know what historical truth is, or how a 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 171 

man should set about looking for it. As therefore 
his book is not written with that regard for truth 
with which a book ought to be written, I hold 
that I am justified in saying that it is not * un 
livre de bonne foy.' " 

It is difficult to read this disingenuous farrago 
of insinuation even now without a strong sense of 
moral contempt. But vengeance was coming, and 
before many years were over his head Freeman 
had occasion to remember the Horatian tag : 

Raro antecedentem scelestum 
Deseruit pede poena claudo. 

Froude himself took the matter very lightly. He 
had boldly offered the fullest inquiry, and Freeman 
had. not been clever enough to shelter himself 
behind the plea that copies were not originals ; he 
did not know enough about manuscripts to think 
of it. The blunders he had detected were trifling, 
and Froude summed up the labours of his an- 
tagonists fairly enough in a letter to Skelton from 
his beloved Derreen.^ " I acknowledge to five real 
mistakes in the whole hook— twelve volumes — 
about twenty trifling slips, equivalent to i's not 
dotted and t's not crossed ; and that is all that the 
utmost malignity has discovered. Every one of 
the rascals has made a dozen blunders of his own, 
too, while detecting one of mine." Skelton' s own 
testimony is worth citing, for, though a personal 
friend, he was a true scholar. " We must remem- 

1 June 2ist, 1870. 



172 



LIFE OF FROUDE 



ber that he was to some extent a pioneer, and that 
he was the first (for instance) to utilise the treasures 
of Simancas. He transcribed, from the Spanish, 
masses of papers which even a Spaniard could I 
have read with difficulty, and I am assured that 
his translations (with rare exceptions) render thej 
original with singular exactness." ^ And in thej 
preface to his Maitland of Lethington the samej 
distinguished author says, " Only the man orj 
woman who has had to work upon the mass of] 
Scottish material in the Record Office can properly 
appreciate Mr. Fronde's inexhaustible industry) 
and substantial accuracy. His point of view is] 
very different from mine ; but I am bound to say 
that his acquaintance with the intricacies of 
Scottish politics during the reign of Mary appears] 
to me to be almost, if not quite, unrivalled." John] 
Hill Burton, to whose learning and judgment] 
Freeman's were as moonlight unto sunlight, and! 
as water unto wine, concurred in Skelton's view, 
and no one has ever known Scottish historyj 
better than Burton. 

Freeman's reckless and unscholarly attacks upon! 
Froude produced no effect upon his own master! 
Stubbs, whom he was always covering with] 
adulation. From the Chair of Modern History! 
at Oxford in 1876 Stubbs pronounced Fronde's 
" great book," as he called it, to be ** a work of 
great industry, power, and importance." Stubbs 
was as far as possible from agreeing with Froude j 

' Table Talk of Shirley, p. 143. 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 173 

in opinion. An orthodox Churchman and a 
staunch Tory, he never varied in his opposition 
to Liberahsm, as well ecclesiastical as political, 
and he had no sympathy with the reformers. But 
his simple, manly, pious character was incapable 
of supporting His cause by personal slander. Un- 
like Freeman, he had a rich vein of racy humour, 
which he indulged in a famous epigram on Froude 
and Kingsley, too familiar for quotation. But he 
could appreciate Froude's learning and industry, 
for he was a real student himself. 

The controversy between Froude and Freeman, 
however, was by no means at an end, and I may 
as well proceed at once to the conclusion of it, 
chronology notwithstanding. In the year 1877 
Froude contributed to The Nineteenth Century a 
series of papers on the Life and Times of Thomas 
Becket, since republished in the fourth volume 
of his Short Studies. Full of interesting informa- 
tion, the result of minute pains, and excellent in 
style, they make no pretence to be, as the History 
was, a work of original research. They are indeed 
founded upon the Materials for the History of 
Thomas Becket, which Canon Robertson had edited 
for the Master of the Rolls in the previous year. 
They were of course read by every one, because 
they were written by Froude, whereas Robertson's 
learned Introduction would only have been read 
by scholars. Froude' s conclusions were much the 
same as the erudite Canon's. He did not pretend 
to know the twelfth century as he knew the 



174 



LIFE OF FROUDE 



sixteenth, and he avowedly made use of another 
man's knowledge to point his favourite moral that 
emancipation from ecclesiastical control was a 
necessary stage in the development of Enghsh 
freedom . He may have been unconsciously affected 
by his familiarity with the quarrel between Wolsey 
and Henry VIII. in describing the quarrel between 
Becket and Henry II. The Church of the middle 
ages discharged invaluable functions which in 
later times were more properly undertaken by 
the State. Froude sided with Henry, and showed, 
as he had not much difficulty in showing, that 
there were a good many spots on the robe of 
Becket' s saintliness. The immunity of Church- 
men, that is, of clergymen, from the jurisdiction 
of secular tribunals was not conducive either to 
morality or to order. 

Froude' s essays might have been forgotten, like 
other brilliant articles in other magazines, if 
Freeman had let them alone. But the spectacle 
of Froude presuming to write upon those earlier 
periods of which The Saturday Review had so 
often and so dogmatically pronounced him to be 
ignorant, drove Freeman into print. If he had 
disagreed with Froude on the main question, the 
only question which matters now, he would have 
been justified, and more than justified, in setting 
out the opposite view. A defence of Becket against 
Henry, of the Church against the State, from the 
pen of a competent writer, would have been as 
interesting and as important a contribution as 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 175 

Froude's own papers to the great issue between 
Sacerdotalism and Erastianism. There is a great 
deal more to be said for Becket than for 
Wolsey ; and though Freeman found it difficult to 
state any case with temperance, he could have 
stated this ca^e with power. But, much as he 
disliked Froude, he agreed with him. " Looking," 
he wrote, " at the dispute between Henry and 
Thomas by the light of earHer and of later ages, 
we see that the cause of Henry was the right one ; 
that is, we see that it was well that the cause of 
Henry triumphed in the long run." Nevertheless 
he rushed headlong upon his victim, and " be- 
laboured" Froude, with all the violence of which 
he was capable, in The Contemporary Review. 
Hitherto his attacks had been anonymous. Now 
for the first time he came into the open, and 
delivered his assault in his own name. Froude's 
forbearance, as well as his own vanity, had blinded 
him to the danger he was incurring. The first 
sentence of his first article explains the fury of an 
invective for which few parallels could be found 
since the days of the Renaissance. "Mr. Froude's 
appearance on the field of mediaeval history will 
hardly be matter of rejoicing to those who have 
made mediaeval history one of the chief studies 
of their lives." Freeman's pedantry was, as 
Matthew Arnold said, ferocious, and he seems to 
have cherished the fantastic delusion that particu- 
lar periods of history belonged to particular histo- 
rians. Before writing about Becket Froude should, 



176 LIFE OF FROUDE 

according to this primitive doctrine, have asked 
leave of Freeman, or of Stubbs, or of an industrious 
clergyman, Professor Brewer, who edited with 
ability and learning several volumes of the Rolls 
Series. That to warn off Froude would be to warn 
off the public was so much the better for the pur- 
poses of an exclusive clique. For Froude' s style, 
that accursed style which was gall and wormwood 
to Freeman, " had," as he kindly admitted, " its 
merits." Page after page teems with mere abuse, 
a sort of pale reflection, or, to vary the metaphor, 
a faint echo from Cicero on Catiline, or Burke on 
Hastings. " On purely moral points there is no 
need now for me to enlarge ; every man who knows 
right from wrong ought to be able to see through 
the web of ingenious sophistry which tries to 
justify the slaughter of More and Fisher " ; al- 
though the guilt of More and Fisher is a question 
not of morality, but of evidence. '^ Mr. Froude by 
his own statement has not made history the study 
of his life," which was exactly what he had done, 
and stated that he had done. " The man who 
insisted on the Statute-book being the text of 
English history showed that he had never heard 
of peine forte et dure, and had no clear notion of a 
Bill of Attainder." 

Freeman could not even be consistent in abuse 
for half a page. Immediately after charging 
Froude with " fanatical hatred towards the English 
Church, reformed or unreformed " — though he 
was the great champion of the Reformation — '' a 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 177 

degree of hatred which must be peculiar to those 
who have entered her ministry and forsaken it " — 
Hke Freeman's bosom friend Green — he says that 
Froude " never reaches so high a point as in 
several passages where he describes various scenes 
and features of monastic life." But this could not 
absolve him from having made a " raid " upon 
another man's period, from being a *' marauder," 
from writing about a personage whom Stubbs 
might have written about, though he had not. 
Froude had ** an inborn and incurable twist, 
which made it impossible for him to make an 
accurate statement about any matter." " By 
some destiny which it would seem that he cannot 
escape, instead of the narrative which he finds — 
at least which all other readers find — in his book 
he invariably substitutes another narrative out of 
his own head." *' Very few of us can test manu- 
scripts at Simancas ; it is not every one who can 
at a moment's notice test references to manuscripts 
much nearer home." This is a strange insinuation 
from a man who never tested a manuscript, seldom, 
if ever, consulted a manuscript, and had declined 
Froude' s challenge to let his copies be compared 
with his abridgment. One grows tired of tran- 
scribing a mere succession of innuendoes. Yet it is 
essential to clear this matter up once and for all, 
that the public may judge between Froude and 
his life-long enemy. 

The standard by which Freeman affected to 
judge Froude' s articles in The Nineteenth Century 

(2310) 12 



178 LIFE OF FROUDE 

was fantastic. " Emperors and Popes, Sicilian 
Kings and Lombard Commonwealths, should be 
as familiar to him who would write The Life and 
Times of Thomas Becket as the text of the Con- 
stitutions of Clarendon or the relations between 
the Sees of Canterbury and York." If Froude had 
written an elaborate History of Henry 11. , as he 
wrote a History of Henry VI 1 1., he would have 
qualified himself in the manner somewhat bom- 
bastically described. But even Lord Acton, who 
seemed to think that he could not write about 
anything until he knew everything, would scarcely 
have prepared himself for an article in The Nine- 
teenth Century by mastering the history of the 
world. And if Froude had done so, it would have 
profited him little. He would have forgotten it, 
"with that calm oblivion of facts which distin- 
guishes him from all other men who have taken on 
themselves to read past events." He would still 
have written " whatever first came into his head, 
without stopping to see whether a single fact 
bore his statements out or not." " Accurate 
statement of what really happened, even though 
such accurate statement might serve Mr. 
Froude's purpose, is clearly forbidden by the des- 
tiny which guides Mr. Froude's literary career." 
These extracts from The Contemporary Review 
are samples, and only samples, from a mass of 
rhetoric not unworthy of the grammarian who 
prayed for the damnation of an opponent because 
he did not agree with him in his theory of irregular 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 179 

verbs. Freeman^ whose self-assertion was per- 
petual, represented himself throughout his libel 
as fighting for the cause of truth. His own 
reverence for truth he illustrated quaintly enough 
at the close of his last article. " I leave others 
to protest/ said this veracious critic, " against 
Mr. Froude's treatment of the sixteenth century. 
I do not profess to have mastered those times in 
detail from original sources." I leave others to 
protest ! From 1864 to 1870 Freeman had con- 
tinuously attacked successive volumes of Froude's 
History in The Saturday Review. Yet he here 
makes in his own name a statement quite irre- 
concilable with his ever having done anything of 
the kind, and accompanies it with an admission 
which, if it had been made in The Saturday Review, 
would have robbed his invective of more than half 
its sting. 

And now let us see what was the real foundation 
for this imposing fabric. Freeman's boisterous 
truculence made such a deafening noise, and raised 
such a blinding dust, that it takes some little time 
and trouble to discover the hollowness of the 
charges. With four-fifths of Froude's narrative he 
does not deal at all, except to borrow from it for 
his own purposes, as he used to borrow from the 
History in The Saturday Review. In the other 
fifth, the preliminary pages, he discovered two 
misprints of names, one mistake of fact, and three 
or four exaggerations. Not one of these errors 
is so grave as his own statement, picked up from 



i8o LIFE OF FROUDE 

some bad lawyer, that "-the preamble of an Act 
of Parliament need not be received as of any- 
binding effect." The preamble is part of the 
Act, and gives the reasons why the Act was 
passed. Of course the rules of grammar show 
that being explanatory it is not an operative 
part ; but it can be quoted in any court of 
justice to explain the meaning of the clauses. 

In his Annals of an English Abbey Froude 
allowed " Robert Fitzwilliam " to pass for Robert 
Fitzwalter in his proofs, and upon this con- 
clusive evidence that Froude was unfit to 
write history Freeman pounced with triumphant 
exultation. He had some skill in the correc- 
tion of misprints, and would have been better 
employed in revising proof-sheets for Froude 
than in " belabouring " him. Froude said that 
Becket's name " denoted Saxon extraction." An 
anonymous biographer, not always accurate, says 
that both his parents came from Normandy. It 
is probable, though by no means certain, that in 
this case the biographer was right, and Froude 
corrected the mistake when, in consequence of 
Freeman's criticisms, he republished the articles. 
Froude, on the authority of Edward Grim, who 
knew Becket, and wrote his Life, referred to the 
cruelty and ferocity of Becket's administration 
as Chancellor. Freeman declared that " anything 
more monstrous never appeared from the pen of 
one who professed to be narrating facts." Froude 
not only " professed " to be narrating facts : he 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN i8i 

was narrating them. The only question is whether 
they happened in England^ in Toulouse, or in 
Aquitaine. Freeman exposed his own ignorance 
by alleging that Grim meant the suppression of 
the free lances, which happened before Becket 
became Chancellor. He did not in fact know the 
subject half so well as Froude, though Froude 
might have more carefully qualified his general 
words. Froude' s account of Becket' s appoint- 
ment to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, his 
scruples, and how he overcame them, is described 
by Freeman as ** pure fiction." It was taken from 
William of Canterbury, and, though open to doubt 
upon some points, is quite as likely to be true as the 
narrative preferred by Freeman. The most serious 
error, indeed the only serious error, attributed by 
Freeman to Froude is the statement that Becket's 
murderers were shielded from punishment by 
the King. Freeman alleges with his usual con- 
fidence that they could not be tried in a secular 
court because their victim was a bishop. It is 
doubtful whether a lay tribunal ever admitted 
such a plea, and the Constitutions of Clarendon, 
which were in force at the time of Becket's assas- 
sination, abolished clerical privileges altogether. 
Here Froude was almost certainly right, and 
Freeman almost certainly wrong. 

But Freemaji was not content with making 
mountains of mole-hills, with speaking of a great 
historian as if he were a pretentious dunce. He 
stooped to write the words, '' Natural kindliness, if 



i82 LIFE OF FROUDE 

no other feelings might have kept back the fiercest 
of partisans from ignoring the work of a long- 
forgotten brother, and from deahng stabs in the 
dark at a brother's almost forgotten fame." The 
meaning of this sentence, so far as it has a 
meaning, was that Hurrell Froude composed a 
fragment on the Life of Becket which the mistaken 
kindness of friends published after his own pre- 
mature death. If Froude had written anony- 
mously against this work, the phrase " stabs in 
the dark " would have been intelligible. As he 
had written in his own name, and had not men- 
tioned his brother's work at all, part at least of 
the accusation was transparently and obviously 
false. 

At last, however, Freeman had gone too far. 
Froude had borne a great deal, he could bear no 
more ; and he took up a weapon which Freeman 
never forgot. I can well recall, as can hundreds of 
others, the appearance in The Nineteenth Century 
for April, 1879, of ''A Few Words on Mr. Freeman." 
They were read with a sense of general pleasure and 
satisfaction, a boyish delight in seeing a big bully 
well thrashed before the whole school. Froude 
was so calm, so dignified, so self-restrained, so 
consciously superior to his rough antagonist in 
temper and behaviour. Only once did he show 
any emotion. It was when he spoke of the 
dastardly attempt to strike him through the 
memory of his brother. " I look back upon my 
brother," he said, "as on the whole the most 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 183 

remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I 
have never seen any person — not one — in whom, 
as I now think of him, the excellences of intellect 
and character were combined in fuller measure. 
Of my personal feeling towards him I cannot 
speak. I am ashamed to have been compelled, 
by what I can only describe as an inexcusable 
insult, to say what I have said." It was not 
difficult to show that Freeman's four articles in 
The Contemporary Review contained worse blunders 
than any he had attributed to Froude, as, for 
instance, the allegation that Henry VIII., who 
founded bishoprics and organised the defence of 
the country, squandered away all that men before 
his time had agreed to respect. Easy also was it 
to disprove the charge of " hatred towards the 
English Church at all times and under all char- 
acters " by the mere mention of Cranmer, Latimer, 
Ridley, and Hooper. The statement that Froude 
had been a " fanatical votary " of the mediaeval 
Church was almost delicious in the extravagance of 
its absurdity; and it would have been impossible 
better to retort the wild charges of misrepresenta- 
tion, in which it is hard to suppose that even Free- 
man himself believed, than by the simple words, 
"It is true that I substitute a story in English 
for a story in Latin, a short story for a long one, 
and a story in a popular form for a story in a 
scholastic one." In short, Froude wrote a style 
which every scholar loves, and every pedant hates. 
With a light touch, but a touch which had a 



i84 LIFE OF FROUDE 

sting, Froude disposed of the nonsense which 
made him translate prcedictce rationes ** shortened 
rations " instead of " the foregoing accounts/* and 
in a graver tone he reminded the pubhc that his 
offer to test the accuracy of his extracts from 
unprinted authorities had been refused. Graver 
still, and not without indignation, is his reference 
to Freeman's suggestion that he thought the 
Cathedral Church of St. Albans had been de- 
stroyed. Most people, when they finished Froude' s 
temperate but crushing refutation, must have felt 
surprised that the opportunity for it should ever 
have arisen. 

Froude had done his work at last, and done 
it thoroughly. Freeman's plight was not to be 
envied. If his offence had been rank, his punish- 
ment had been tremendous. Even The Spectator, 
which had hitherto upheld him through thick and 
thin, admonished him that he had passed the 
bounds of decency and infringed the rules of 
behaviour. Dreading a repetition of the penalty 
if he repeated the offence, fearing that silence 
would imply acquiescence in charges of persistent 
calumny, he blurted out a kind of awkward half- 
apology. He confessed, in The Contemporary 
Review for May, 1879, that he had criticised in 
The Saturday all the volumes of Froude' s Elizabeth. 
This self-constituted champion proceeded to say 
that he knew nothing about Froude' s personal 
character, and that when he accused Froude of 
stabbing his dead brother " in the dark " he only 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 185 

meant that the brother was dead. When he says 
that Fronde's article was ** plausible, and more 
than plausible," he is quite right. It is more 
than plausible, because it is true. After vainly 
trying to explain away some of the errors brought 
home to him by Froude, and leaving others un- 
noticed, he complains, with deep and obvious 
sincerity, that Froude had not read his books, nor 
even his articles in Encyclopaedias. He exhibits 
a striking instance of his own accuracy. In his 
defence against the rather absurd charge of not 
going, as Macaulay had gone, to see the places 
about which he wrote, Froude pleaded want of 
means. Freeman rejoined that Macaulay was at 
one time of his life " positively poor." He was so 
for a very short time when his Fellowship at 
Trinity came to an end. Unluckily for Freeman's 
statement the period was before his appointment 
to be Legal Member of Council in India, and long 
before he had begun to write his History of 
England. The most charitable explanation of an 
erroneous statement is usually the correct one, and 
it was probably f orgetfulness which made Freeman 
say that he did not hear of Froude' s having placed 
copies of the Simancas manuscripts in the British 
Museum till 1878, whereas he had himself discussed 
it in The Pall Mall Gazette eight years before. If 
Froude had made such an astonishing slip, there 
would have been more ground for imputing to him 
an incapacity to distinguish between truth and 
falsehood. Freeman's "Last WordsonMr. Froude" 



i86 LIFE OF FROUDE 

show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they 
end with characteristic bluster about the truth, 
from which he had so grievously departed. But 
Froude was never troubled with him again. 

Although a refuted detractor is not formidable 
in the flesh, the evil that he does lives after him. 
Freeman's view of Froude is not now held by any 
one whose opinion counts ; yet still there seems 
to rise, as from a brazen head of Ananias, the 
dismal and monotonous chaunt, " He was careless 
of the truth, he did not make history the business 
of his life." He did make history the business of 
his Hfe, and he cared more for truth than for 
anything else in the world. Freeman's biographer 
has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with 
Froude. Green, true historian as he was, made 
more mistakes than Froude, and the mistakes 
he did make were more serious. He trespassed 
on the preserves of Brewer, who criticised him 
severely without deviating from the standard 
of a Christian and a gentleman. Even over the 
domain of Stubbs, and the consecrated ground of 
the Norman Conquest itself. Green ranged without 
being Freemanised as a poacher. But then Green 
was Freeman's personal friend, and in friendship 
Freeman was staunch. They belonged to the 
same set, and no one was more cliquish than 
Freema,n. Liberal as he was in politics, he always 
professed the utmost contempt for the general 
public, and wondered what guided their strange 
tastes in literature. Dean Stephens has ap- 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 187 

parently suppressed most of the references 
to Froude in Freeman's private letters, and cer- 
tainly he drops no hint of the controversy about 
Becket. But the following passage from his *' Con- 
cluding Survey " is apparently aimed at Froude. 
Freeman, we are told, " was unable to write or 
speak politely " — and if the Dean had stopped 
there I should have had nothing to say ; but he 
goes on — " of any one who pretended to more 
knowledge than he really had, or who enjoyed a 
reputation for learning which was undeserved; 
nay, more, he considered it to be a positive duty to 
expose such persons. In doing this he was often 
no doubt too indifferent to their feelings, and 
employed language of unwarranted severity which 
provoked angry retaliation, and really weakened 
the effect of his criticism, by diverting public 
sympathy from himself to the object of his attack. 
But it was quite a mistake to suppose, as many 
did, that his fierce utterances were the outcome 
of ill-temper or of personal animosity. He enter- 
tained no ill-will whatever towards literary or 
political opponents." 

There is more to the same effiect, and of 
course Froude must have been in Stephens's 
mind. But the reputation of a great historian 
is not to be taken away by hints. It may suit 
Freeman's admirers to seek refuge in meaningless 
generalities. Those who are grateful for Froude' s 
services to England, and to literature, have no 
interest in concealment. Froude never " pre- 



i88 LIFE OF FROUDE 

tended to more knowledge than he really had." 
So far from " enjoying a reputation for learning 
which was undeserved," he disguised his learning 
rather than displayed it, and wore it lightly, like 
a flower. That Freeman should have *' con- 
sidered it to be a positive duty to expose " a man 
whose knowledge was so much wider and whose 
industry was so much greater than his own is 
strange. That he did his best for years, no 
doubt from the highest motives, to damage 
Froude's reputation, and to injure his good 
name, is certain. With the general reader he failed. 
The public had too much sense to believe that 
Froude was merely, or chiefly, or at all, an eccle- 
siastical pamphleteer. But by dint of noisy 
assertion, and perpetual repetition. Freeman did 
at last infect academic coteries with the idea that 
Froude was a superficial sciolist. The same thing 
had been said of Macaulay, and believed by the 
same sort of people. Froude' s books were cer- 
tainly much easier to read than Freeman's. Must 
they therefore have been much easier to write ? ^ 
Two-thirds of Froude' s mistakes would have been | 
avoided, and Freeman would never have had his 
chance, if the former had had a keener eye for slips 
in his proof-sheets, or had engaged competent assist- 
ance. When he allowed Wilhelmus to be printed 
instead of Willelmus, Freeman shouted with ex- 
ultant glee that a man so hopelessly ignorant of 
mediaeval nomenclature had no right to express an 
opinion upon the dispute between Becket and 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 189 

the King. Nothing could exceed his transports 
of joy when he found out that Froude did not 
know the ancient name of Lisieux. Freeman 
thought, hke the older Pharisees, that he should 
be heard for his much speaking, and for a time he 
was. People did not realise that so many con- 
fident allegations could be made in which there 
was no substance at all. They thought them- 
selves safe in making allowance for Freeman's 
exaggeration, and Freeman simply bored many 
persons into accepting his estimate of Froude. 
Perhaps he went a little too far when he claimed 
to have found inaccuracies in Froude' s transcripts 
from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing 
a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank 
as that. It was not often that he forgot his 
two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, 
facile ignoramus, and himself as the profound, 
erudite student. 

Just after reading Freeman's furious articles on 
Becket, I turned to Froude' s " Index of Papers 
collected by me October, November, and Decem- 
ber, 1856." It covers twenty-one pages, very 
closely written, and I will give a few extracts to 
show what sort of preparation this sciolist thought 
necessary for his ecclesiastical pamphlet. The 
first entry, representing four pages of text, is 
*' Hanson's Description of England. Diet, habits, 
prices of provisions from Parliamentary History." 
Another is " Dress and loose habits of the London 
clergy in i486. From Morton's Injunctions'* 



igo LIFE OF FROUDE 

" State of the Abbey of St. Albans in 1489 " 
shows that Froude was well acquainted with 
that subject many years before he wrote his 
Short Study on it. " The Bishops of all the Sees 
in England under Henry, date of appointment, 
etc./* is another of these items, which also comprise 
" Extracts from the so-called Privy Purse Expenses 
of Henry VHI." "Bulla Clementis Pap^ VH. 
concessa Regi Henrico de Secundis nuptiis. This 
contains the passage quocunque licito vel illicito 
coitu." " Petition of the Upper House of Convo- 
cation for the suppression of heretical books." 
" Royal Letter on the Articles of 1536 which were 
written, Henry says, by himself." ' ' Elaborate and 
extremely valuable State Papers on the Duchy of 
Milan, and the dispute between the Emperor and 
Francis I." " Pole to James, the Fifth Letter of 
Warning." ''Pole to the Pope, May i8th, 1537. 
N.B. — Very remarkable." " Remarkable State 
Paper drawn by Pole and addressed to the Pope at 
the time of the interview at Paris between Francis 
and the Emperor." " Privy Council to the Duke 
of Norfolk. Marquis of Exeter to Sir A. Brown. 
Promise of money. Directions to send relief to the 
Duke of Suffolk in Lincolnshire, etc." "Henry VHL 
to the Duke of Norfolk about November 27th, 1536. 
Part of it in his own hand. High and chivalrous." 
" Curious account of the ferocity of the clergy in 
Lincolnshire." " Curious questions addressed to 
Fisher Bishop of Rochester on some treasonable 
foreign correspondence." " Learned men to be 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 191 

sent to preach to the disaffected counties. Henry's 
version of the causes of the insurrection — N.B., and 
the cure." " Instructions to the Earl of Sussex 
for tranquiUising the North after the Insurrection. 
Long and curious — noticeable list of accusations 
against the Monastic bodies. In Wriothesley's 
hand." ** Sir Francis Bigod to Sir Robert Constable. 
Very remarkable account of his unpopularity 
in the first rebellion from suspicion of heresy, 
January i8th, 1537." *' Emperor at Paris, 1539. 
War between France and England. Secret causes 
why the Emperor made a secret peace with France." 
" Lord Lisle to Henry VIII. on his chance of run- 
ning down the French fleet as they lay at anchor, 
July 2ist, 1545." *' Losses of the old families by 
the suppression — new foundation by Henry VIII. 
Bishoprics, hospitals, colleges, etc." " The Abbot 
of Coggeshall hides jewels, makes away goods, 
maintains Rome and consults the devil." " Henry 
VIII. to Justices of the Peace, admonition for 
neglect of duty. Highly in character." " King's 
Highness having discovered all the enormities of 
the clergy, pardons all that is past, and exhorts 
them to a Christian life in all time to come." 

During the three months to which alone this list 
refers Froude must have read and studied more 
than four hundred pages of important documents. 
If any one wishes to form a correct judgment of 
Froude as an historian, he can scarcely begin better 
than by reversing every statement that Freeman felt 
it his duty to make. Froude came to write about 



192 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the sixteenth century after careful study of pre- 
vious times. He prepared himself for his task by 
patient research among letters and manuscripts 
such as Freeman never thought of attempting. 
He neglected no source of information open to 
him, and he obtained special privileges for search- 
ing Spanish archives which entailed upon him the 
severest labour. He studied not only at Simancas, 
where none had been before him, but also in Paris, 
in Brussels, in Vienna. The documents he read 
were in half a dozen languages, sometimes in the 
vilest scrawls. Long afterwards he described his 
own experience in his own graphic way. ** Often 
at the end of a page," he said, ** I have felt as after 
descending a precipice, and have wondered how 
I got down. I had to cut my way through a 
jungle, for no one had opened the road for me. I 
have been turned into rooms piled to the window- 
sill with bundles of dust-covered despatches, and 
told to make the best of it. Often I have found 
the sand glistening on the ink where it had been 
sprinkled when a page was turned. There the 
letter had lain, never looked at again since it was 
read and put away." Out of such materials 
Froude wrote a History which any educated person 
can read with undisturbed enjoyment. He was too 
good an artist to let his own difficulties be seen, and 
they were assumed not to exist. Froude did not 
write, like Stubbs, for professional students alone ; 
he wrote for the general public, for those whom 
Freeman affected to despise. So did Macaulay, 







it^?^'}'i^^./ 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 193 

whom Freeman idolised. So did Gibbon, the 
greatest historian of all time. Fronde's History 
covered the most controversial period in the 
growth of the Enghsh Church. Lynx-eyed critics, 
with their powers sharpened by partisanship, 
searched it through and through for errors the 
most minute. Some of course they found. But 
they did not find one which interfered with 
the main argument, and such evidence as has 
since been discovered confirms Fronde's proposi- 
tion that the cause of Henry was the cause of 
England. Freeman's Norman Conquest has secured 
for him an honourable fame ; his attacks upon 
Froude, until they have been forgotten, will always 
be a reproach to his memory. 

It was with just pride, and natural satisfaction, 
that Froude wrote to Lady Derby in May, 1890 : 
" I am revising my English History for a final 
edition. Since I wrote it the libraries and 
archives of all Europe have been searched and 
sifted. I am fairly astonished to find how little 
I shall have to alter. The book is of course young y 
but I do not know that it is the worse on that 
account. That fault at any rate I shall not try 
to cure." 

The Divorce of Katharine of Aragon, though not 
published till 1891, is a sequel to the History. 
The twenty years which had intervened did not 
lead Froude to modify any of his main conclusions, 
and he was able to furnish new evidence in sup- 
port of them. The correspondence of Chapuys, 

(3310) 13 



194 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Imperial Ambassador at the court of Henry VIII., 
puts Fisher's treason beyond doubt, and proves 
that the bishop was endeavouring to procure an 
invasion by Spanish troops when the king, in 
Freeman's language, ** slaughtered " him. The 
next year Froude brought out, in a volume with 
other essays, his Spanish Story of the Armada, 
written in his raciest manner, and proving from 
Spanish sources the grotesque incompetence of 
Medina Sidonia. There are few better narratives 
in the language, and the enthusiastic admira- 
tion of a great American humourist was as well 
deserved as it is charmingly expressed. 

" The other night," wrote Bret Harte, " I 
took up Longman's Magazine^ and began to 
lazily read something about the Spanish Armada. 
My knowledge of that historic event, I ought 
to say, is rather hazy ; I remember a vague 
something about Drake playing bowls while the 
Spanish fleet was off the coast, and of Elizabeth 
going to Tilbury en grande tenue, but there was 
always a good deal of ' Jingo ' shouting and 
Crystal Palace fireworks about it, and it never 
seemed real. In the article I was reading the 
style caught me first ; I became tremendously 
interested ; it was a new phase of the old story, 
and yet there was something pleasantly familiar. 
I turned to the last page quickly, and saw your 
blessed name. I had heard nothing about it 
before. Then I went through it breathlessly to 

' The successor to Fvaser. 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 195 

the last word, which came all too soon. And now 
I am as eager for the next instalment as I was 
when a boy for the next chapter of my Dickens or 
Thackeray. Don't laugh, dear old fellow, over 
my enthusiasm or my illustration, but remember 
that I represent a considerable amount of average 
human nature, and that's what we all write for, 
and ought to write for, and be dashed to the critics 
who say to the contrary ! I thought your parallel 
of Philip and Don Quixote delightful, but the 
similitude of Medina Sidonia and Sancho Panza 
is irresistible. That letter to Philip is Sancho's 
own hand ! Where did you get it ? How long 
have you had it up your sleeve ? Have you got 
any more such cards to play ? Can you not give 
us a picture of those gentlemen adventurers with 
their exalted beliefs, their actual experiences, their 
little jealousies, and the love-lorn Lope de Vega 
in their midst ? What mankind you have come 
upon, dear Froude ! How I envy you ! Have 
you nothing to spare for a poor literary man like 
myself, who has made all he could out of the hulk 
of a poor old Philippine galleon on Pacific seas ? 
Couldn't you lend me a Don or a galley-slave out 
of that delightful crew of solemn lunatics ? And 
yet how splendid are those last orders of the Duke ! 
With what a swan-like song they sailed away ! " 

The letter from Medina Sidonia to Philip, which 
reminded both Froude and Bret Harte of Sancho 
Panza, is too delicious not to be given in full. 

"My health is bad, and from my small experience 



196 LIFE OF FROUDE 

of the water I know that I am always sea-sick. 
I have no money which I can spare, I owe a 
million ducats, and I have not a real to spend on 
my outfit. The expedition is on such a scale, and 
the object is of such high importance, that the 
person at the head of it ought to understand 
navigation and sea-fighting, and I know nothing of 
either. I have not one of those essential qualifica- 
tions. I have no acquaintance among the officers 
who are to serve under me. Santa Cruz had 
information about the state of things in England ; 
I have none. Were I competent otherwise, I 
should have to act in the dark by the opinion of 
others, and I cannot tell to whom I may trust. 
Th Adelantado of Castile would do better than I. 
Our Lord would help him, for he is a good Christian, 
and has fought in several battles. If you send me, 
depend upon it, I shall have a bad account to 
render of my trust." ^ 

"Those last orders of the Duke" — the same 
Duke, by the way — are ** splendid " enough of 
their kind. 

** From highest to lowest you are to understand 
the object of our expedition, which is to recover 
countries to the Church now oppressed by the 
enemies of the true faith. I therefore beseech 
you to remember your calling, so that God may 
be with us in what we do. I charge you, one and 
all, to abstain from profane oaths, dishonouring 
to the names of our Lord, our Lady, and the 

^ Spanish Siory of the Armada, pp. 19, 20. 



FROUDE AND FREEMAN 197 

Saints. All personal quarrels are to be suspended 
while the expedition lasts, and for a month after 
it is completed. Neglect of this will be held as 
treason. Each morning at sunrise the ship-boys, 
according to custom, will sing ' Good Morrow * 
at the foot of the mainmast, and at sunset the 
' Ave Maria.' Since bad weather may interrupt 
the communications the watchword is laid down 
for each day in the week : Sunday, Jesus ; the 
days succeeding, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity, 
Santiago, the Angels, All Saints, and Our Lady." ^ 

*' God and one," it has been said, " make a 
majority." But in this case God was not on the 
side of the pious and incompetent Medina Sidonia. 

It was not till this same year 1892, after Free- 
man's death, that the " Calendar of Letters and 
State Papers relative to English affairs preserved 
principally in the Archives of Simancas " began 
to be published in England by the Master of 
the Rolls. Translated by an eminent scholar, Mr. 
Martin Hume, and printed in a book, they could 
have been read by Freeman himself, and can be 
read by any one who cares to undertake the task. 
They will at least give some idea of the enormous 
labour undergone by Froude in his several sojourns 
at Simancas. I cannot profess to have instituted 
a systematic comparison, but a few specimens 
selected at random show that Froude summarised 
fairly the documents with which he dealt. That 
there should be some discrepancies was inevitable. 

^^ Spanish Story of the Armada, pp. 27, 28. 



198 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Philip 11. wrote a remarkably bad hand, and his 
Ambassadors were not chosen for their penman- 
ship. The most striking fact in the case 
is that Mr. Hume has derived assistance from 
Froude in the performance of his own duties. " I 
have/' he writes in his Introduction, " very care- 
fully compared the Spanish text when doubtful 
with Mr. Froude' s extracts and copies and with 
transcripts of many of the letters in the British 
Museum." Nothing could give a better idea than 
this sentence of the difficulties which Froude had 
to surmount, or of the fidelity with which he 
surmounted them. He had not only achieved 
his own object : he also smoothed the path of 
future labourers in the same field. It was 
the inaccessibility of the records at Simancas 
that enabled Freeman to accuse Froude of not 
correctly transcribing or abstracting manuscripts. 
Like other people, he made mistakes; but mis- 
takes have to be weighed as well as counted, and 
even in enumerating Froude' s we must always 
remember that he used more original matter than 
any other modern historian. 



CHAPTER VI 

IRELAND AND AMERICA 

FROUDE had made history the business of 
his hfe, and he had no sooner completed 
his History of England than he turned his attention 
to the sister people. The Irish chapters in his 
great book had been picked out by hostile critics 
as especially good, and in them he had strongly 
condemned the cruel misgovernment of an English- 
man otherwise so humane as Essex. While he was 
in Ireland he had examined large stores of material 
in Dubhn, which he compared with documents at 
the Record Office in London, and he contemplated 
early in 1871, if not before, a book on Irish history. 
For this task he was not altogether well qualified. 
The religion of Celtic Ireland was repugnant to 
him, and he never thoroughly understood it. In 
religious matters Froude could not be neutral. 
Where Catholic and Protestant came into conflict, 
he took instinctively, almost involuntarilyj the 
Protestant side. .In the England of the sixteenth 
century the Protestant side was the side of 
England. In Ireland the case was reversed, and 

the spirit of Catholicism was identical with the 

199 



200 LIFE OF FROUDE 

spirit of nationality. Irish Catholics to this day- 
associate Protestantism with the sack of Drogheda 
and Wexford, with the detested memory of Oliver 
Cromwell. To Froude, as to Carlyle, Cromwell was 
the minister of divine vengeance upon murderous 
and idolatrous Papists. His liking for the Irish, 
though perfectly genuine, was accompanied with 
an underlying contempt which is more offensive to 
the objects of it than the hatred of an open foe. 
He regarded them as a race unfit for self-govern- 
ment, who had proved their unworthiness of 
freedom by not winning it with the sword. If 
they had not quarrelled among themselves, and 
betrayed one another, they would have established 
their right to independence ; or, if there had been 
still an Act of Union, they could have come in, 
as the Scots came, on their own terms. For an 
Englishman to write the history of Ireland without 
prejudice he must be either a cosmopolitan 
philosopher, or a passionless recluse. Froude was 
an ardent patriot, and his early studies in hagiology 
had led him to the conclusion, not now accepted, 
that St. Patrick never existed at all. His scepti- 
cism about St. Patrick might have been forgiven 
to a man who had probably not much belief in 
St. George. But Froude could not help running 
amok at all the popular heroes of Ireland. In the 
first of his two papers describing a fortnight in 
Kerry he went out of his way to depreciate the 
fame of Daniel O'Connell. " Ireland," he wrote, 
" has ceased to care for him. His fame blazed 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 201 

like a straw bonfire, and has left behind it scarce 
a shovelful of ashes. Never any pubHc man 
had it in his power to do so much good for his 
country, nor was there ever one who accomplished 
so little." ' 

That O'Connell wasted much time in clamour- 
ing for Repeal is perfectly true. But he was as 
much the author of Catholic Emancipation as 
Cobden was the author of Free Trade, and that 
fact alone should have debarred Froude from the 
use of this extravagant language. For though 
an article in Fr user's Magazine is a very different 
thing from a serious history, print imposes some 
obligations, and even two or three casual sentences 
may show the bent of a man's mind. Whatever 
Froude wrote on Ireland, or on anything else, was 
sure to be widely read, and to affect, for good 
or for evil, the opinion of the British public. It 
was therefore peculiarly incumbent on him not 
to flatter English pride by wounding Irish self- 
respect. 

While Froude was writing his English in Ireland 
he received an invitation to give a series of lectures 
in the United States. " The Yankees," he says 
to Skelton,^ " have written to me about going over 
to lecture to them. I am strongly tempted ; but 
I could not tell the truth about Ireland without 
reflecting in a good, many ways on my own country. 
I don't fancy doing that, however justly, to amuse 

* Shovt Studies, vol. ii. p. 241. 
^ Table Talk of Shirley, p. 149. 



202 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Jonathan." These words certainly do not show 
implacable bitterness against Ireland. Brought 
face to face with responsibility, Froude always 
felt the weight of it, and he was never consciously 
unfair. He was under a strong sense of obligation, 
which he felt bound to fulfil. It is impossible 
not to admire the chivalrous and intrepid spirit 
with which he undertook singlehanded to justify 
the conduct of his countrymen before the American 
people, and to persuade them that England had 
provocation for her treatment of Ireland. Once 
convinced that his cause was righteous, he never 
flinched. He believed that false views of the 
Irish question prevailed in America, and that 
he could set them right. He did not alto- 
gether underrate the magnitude of the enter- 
prise. "I go like an Arab of the desert," he 
wrote to Skelton a little later : " my hand 
will be against every man, and therefore every 
man's hand will be against me." ^ A belief in 
Ireland's wrongs was part of the American creed, 
like the faithlessness of Charles II. and the 
tyranny of George III. Irish Americans had 
enormous influence at elections, in Congress, and 
in the newspapers. Released Fenians, O' Donovan 
Rossa among them, had been spreading what 
they called the light, and their own country- 
men at all events believed what they said. The 
American people as a whole were not unfriendly 
to England. The Alabama Arbitration and the 

■ Table Talk of Shirley, p. rsi. 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 203 

Geneva Award had destroyed the ill feeling that 
remained after the fall of Richmond. But it was 
not worth the while of any American politician 
to alienate the Irish vote, and most Americans 
honestly tho|ight, not without reason, that the 
policy of England in Ireland had been abomin- 
able. To let sleeping dogs lie might be wise. 
Once they were unchained, no American hand 
would help to chain them up again. Froude, 
however, conceived that circumstances were un- 
usually favourable. The Irish Church had been 
disestabhshed, and the Fenian prisoners had 
been set free. The Irish Land Act of 1870 had 
recognised the Irish tenant's right to a partnership 
in the soil. Although Froude had no sympathy, 
ecclesiastical or political, with Gladstone, he did 
think that the Land Act was a just and beneficent 
measure from which good would come. In the firm 
belief that he could vindicate the statesmanship 
of his own country before American audiences 
without sacrificing the paramount claims of truth 
and justice, he accepted the invitation. 

After a summer cruise in a big schooner with 
his friend Lord Ducie, whose hospitality at sea 
he often in coming years enjoyed, Froude sailed 
from Liverpool in the Russia at the end of Sep- 
tember, 1872, with the distinguished physicist 
John Tyndall. He was a good sailor, and loved 
a voyage. In his first letter to his wife from 
American soil he describes a storm with the delight 
of a schoolboy. 



204 LIFE OF FROUDE 

" On Saturday morning it blew so hard that it 
was scarcely possible to stand on deck. The wind 
and waves dead ahead, and the whole power of 
the engines only just able to move the ship against 
it. It was the grandest sight I ever witnessed — 
the splendid Russia, steady as if she were on 
a railway, holding her straight course without 
yielding one point to the sea — up the long hill- 
sides of the waves and down into the troughs — 
the crests of the sea all round as far as the eye 
could reach in one wild whirl of foam and spray. 
It was worth coming into the Atlantic to see — with 
the sense all the time of perfect security." 

Froude's visit was in one respect well timed. 
President Grant had just been assured of his second 
term, and even politicians had leisure to think of 
their famous guest. He was at once invited to 
a great banquet in New York, and found himself 
lodged with sumptuous hospitality in a luxurious 
hotel at the expense of the Bureau which had 
organised the lectures. One newspaper quaintly 
described him as " looking like a Scotch farmer, 
with an open frank face and calm mild eyes." His 
History was well known, for the Scribners had sold 
a hundred and fifty thousand copies. His opinions 
were of course freely invited, and he did not hesitate 
to give them. *' I talk much Toryism to them 
all, and ridicule the idea of England's decay, or 
of our being in any danger of revolution ; and with 
Colonies and India and Commerce, etc., I insist 
that we are just^as big as they are, and have just 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 205 

as large a future before us." Both Froude and 
his hosts might have remembered with advantage 
Disraeh's fine saying that great nations are those 
which produce great men. But the sensual 
idolatry of mere size is almost equally common on 
both sides of Ihe Atlantic. 

The banquet was given by Froude' s American 
publishers, the Scribners, and his old acquaintance 
Emerson was one of the company. Another was 
a popular clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, and 
a third was the present Ambassador of the United 
States in London, Mr. Whitelaw Reid. In his 
speech Froude referred to the object of his visit. 
He had heard at home that " one of the most 
prominent Fenian leaders," O'Donovan Rossa, 
" was making a tour in the United States, dilating 
upon English tyranny and the wrongs of Ireland." 
That Froude should cross the seas to confute 
O'Donovan Rossa must have struck the audience 
as scarcely credible, until he explained his mission, 
for as such he regarded it, by asserting that *' the 
judgment of America has more weight in Ireland 
than twenty batteries of English cannon." When 
the Irish had the management of their own 
affairs, he continued, the result was universal 
misery. They could not govern themselves in the 
sixteenth century ; therefore they could not govern 
themselves in the nineteenth. If American opinion 
would only tell the Irish that they had no longer 
any grievances which legislation could redress, the 
Irish would believe it, and all would be well. 



2o6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Though courteously treated as a representative 
Enghshman, Froude had of course no official posi- 
tion, and he hoped that as a private individual his 
voice might be heard. But, while there were thou- 
sands of native Americans who had no love for 
their Irish fellow-citizens, there were very few in- 
deed who cared to take up England's case against 
Ireland. The Democratic party were inclined 
to sympathise with Home Rule as being a mild 
form of Secession, and the Republican party did 
not see why Ireland should be refused the quali- 
fied independence enjoyed by every State of the 
Union. In these unfavourable circumstances 
Froude delivered his first lecture. He made a 
good point when he described the Irish peasant 
in Munster or Connaught looking to America 
as his natural protector. " There is not a 
lad," he exclaimed, "in an Irish national school 
who does not pore over the maps of the States 
which hang on the walls, gaze on them with 
admiration and hope, and count the years till he 
too shall set his foot in those famous cities which 
float before his imagination like the gardens of 
Aladdin." Nevertheless he asked his hearers and 
readers to take it from him that Ireland had no 
longer any good ground of complaint against the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom. Independence 
she could not have, and that not because the 
interests of Great Britain forbade it, which would 
have been an intelligible argument, but because 
she was unfit for it herself. 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 207 

" If I were to sum up in one sentence the secret 
of Ireland's misfortunes, I should say it lay in 
this : that while from the first she has resisted 
England, complained of England, appealed to 
heaven and earth against the wrongs which 
England has inflicted on her, she has ever invited 
others to help her, and has never herself made an 
effective fight for her own rights. ... A majority 
of hustings votes might be found for a separation. 
The majority would be less considerable if in- 
stead of a voting-paper they were called to handle 
a rifle." 

To tell Irishmen that they could obtain liberty 
by fighting for it, and would never get it in any 
other way, was not likely to conciliate them, or 
to promote the cause of peace. Froude's appeal 
to American opinion, however, was more practical. 

" The Irishman requires to be ruled, but ruled 
as all men ought to be, by the laws of right and 
wrong, laws which shall defend the weak from the 
strong and the poor from the rich. When the 
poor peasant is secured the reward of his own 
labour, and is no longer driven to the blunderbuss 
to save himself and his family from legalised 
robbery, if he prove incorrigible then, I will give 
him up. But the experiment remains to be 
made." 

An example had been set by Gladstone in the 
Land Act, and that was the path which further 
legislation ought to follow. So far there would 
not be much disagreement between Froude and 



2o8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

most Irish Americans. Rack-renting upon the 
tenants' improvements was the bane of Irish 
agriculture, and the Act of 1870 was precisely 
what Froude described it, a partial antidote. 
Then the lecturer reverted to ancient history, to 
the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Danish 
invasion. The audience found it rather long, 
and rather dull, even though Dublin, Wexford, 
Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were all built by 
the Danes. But a foundation had to be laid, and 
Froude felt bound also to make it clear that he did 
not take the old Whig view of Government as 
a necessary evil, or swear by the ^^ dismal science" 
of Adam Smith. 

He concluded his first lecture in words which 
at once defined his position and challenged the 
whole Irish race. *' It was not tyranny," he 
cried, " but negligence ; it was not the intrusion 
of English authority, but the absence of all 
authority ; it was that very leaving Ireland to 
herself which she demands so passionately that 
was the cause of her wretchedness." After that 
it was hopeless to expect that he would have an 
impartial hearing. Every Irishman understood 
that the lecturer was an enemy, and was prepared 
not to read for instruction, but to look out for 
mistakes. An article in The New York Tribune, 
which spoke of Froude with admiration and 
esteem, told him plainly enough how it would be. 
" We have had historical lecturers before, but 
never any who essayed with such industry, 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 209 

learning, and eloquence to convince a nation that 
its sympathies for half a century at least have 
have been misplaced. . . . The thesis which he 
only partly set out for the night — that the misfor- 
tunes of Ireland are rather due to the congenital 
qualities of the race than to wrongs inflicted by 
their conquerors — will excite earnest and perhaps 
bitter controversy." This prediction was abun- 
dantly fulfilled, and the controversy spoiled the 
tour. A friendly and sympathetic journalist 
questioned Froude's "wisdom in coming before our 
people with this course of lectures on Irish history. 
. . . We do not care for the domestic troubles of 
other nations, and it is a piece of impertinence to 
thrust them upon our attention. Mr. Froude 
knows perfectly well that England would resent, 
and rightfully, the least interference on our part 
with her Irish policy or her Irish subjects." 

In this criticism there is a large amount of 
common sense, and Froude would have done well to 
think of it before. He was not, however, a man 
to be put down by clamour ; he was sustained 
by the fervour of his convictions, and it was too 
late for remonstrance. His lectures had all been 
carefully prepared, and he went steadily on with 
them. The unusual charge of dullness, which had 
been made against some passages in his opening 
discourse, was never made again. The lectures 
became a leading topic of conversation, and a 
subject of fierce attack. Without fear, and in 
defiance of his critics, he dashed into the reign of 

2310 i^ 



210 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Henry VIII., " the English Blue Beard, whom I 
have been accused of attempting to whitewash." 
" I have no particular veneration for kings/' he 
said. " The English Liturgy speaks of them 
officially as most religious and gracious. They 
have been, I suppose, as religious and gracious as 
other men, neither more nor less. The chief differ- 
ence is that we know more of kings than we know 
of other men." Henry had a short way with 
absentees. He took away their Irish estates, 
" and gave them to others who would reside and 
attend to their work. It would have been con- 
fiscation doubtless," beyond the power of an 
American Congress, though not of a British 
Parliament. ** If in later times there had been 
more such confiscations, Ireland would not have 
been the worse for it." Here, then, Froude was 
on the side of the Irish. Here, as always, he was 
under the influence of Carlyle. His ideal form of 
government was an enlightened despotism, with 
a ruler drawn after the pattern of children's story- 
books, who would punish the wicked and reward 
the good. Froude never consciously defended 
injustice, or tampered with the truth. His faults 
were of the opposite kind. He could not help 
speaking out the whole truth as it appeared to 
him, without regard for time, place, or expediency. 
If he could have defended England without 
attacking Ireland, all would have been well, but 
he could not do it. For his defence of England, 
stated simply, was that Ireland had always been, 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 211 

and still remained, incapable of managing her own 
affairs. " Free nations, gentlemen, are not made 
by playing at insurrection. If Ireland desires to 
be a nation, she must learn not merely to shout 
for liberty, bjit to fight for it " against a bigger 
nation with a standing army in which many 
Irishmen were enlisted. The Irish are a sensitive 
as well as a generous race; and they feel taunts 
as much as more substantial wrongs. When the 
first British statesman of his time, not a Roman 
Catholic, nor, as the Irish would have said, a 
Catholic at all, had denounced the upas, or poison, 
tree of Protestant ascendency, and had cut off its 
two principal branches, Froude wasted his breath 
in telling the American Irish, or the American 
people, that Gladstone did not know what he was 
talking about. The Irish Church Act, the Irish 
Land Act, the release of the Fenians, appealed to 
them as honest measures of justice and concilia- 
tion. There was nothing conciliatory in Froude's 
language, and they did not think it just. From 
the purely historical point of view he had much 
to say for himself, as, for instance : 

" The Papal cause in Europe in the sixteenth 
century, take it for all in all, was the cause of stake 
and gibbet, inquisition, dungeons, and political 
tyranny. It did not lose its character because in 
Ireland it assumed the accidental form of the 
defence of the freedom of opinion." 

Perhaps not. Ireland, for good or for evil, was 
connected with England, and when England was 



212 LIFE OF FROUDE 

at war with the Pope she was at war with him 
in Ireland as elsewhere. The argument, however, 
is double-edged. The Papal cause being no longer, 
for various reasons, the cause of stake and gibbet, 
how could there be the same ground for restricting 
freedom of opinion in Ireland, for passing Coercion 
Acts, for refusing Home Rule ? As Froude himself 
said, " Popery now has its teeth drawn. It can 
bark, but it can no longer bite." '* The Irish 
generally," he went on, '^were rather superstitious 
than religious." These are delicate distinctions. 
" The Bishop of Peterborough must understand," 
said John Bright on a famous occasion, " that I 
believe in holy earth as little as he believes in 
holy water." Elizabeth's Irish policy was to 
take advantage of local factions, and to maintain 
English supremacy by setting them against each 
other. " The result was hideous. The forty-five 
glorious years of Elizabeth were to Ireland years 
of unremitting wretchedness." Nobody could 
complain that Froude spared the English Govern- 
ment. If he had been writing history, or rather 
when he was writing it, the mutual treachery of 
the Irish could not be passed over. " Alas and 
shame for Ireland," said Froude in New York. 
"Not then only, but many times before and after, 
the same plan [offer of pardon to murderous 
traitors] was tried, and was never known to fail. 
Brother brought in the dripping head of brother, 
son of father, comrade of comrade. I pardon 
none, said an English commander, until they have 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 213 

imbued their hands in blood." The revival of 
such horrors on a public platform could serve no 
useful purpose. They could not be pleaded as 
an apology for England, and they inflamed, 
instead of soothing, the animosities which Froude 
professed him^self anxious to allay. Yet he never 
lost sight of justice. On Elizabeth he had no 
mercy. He made her responsible for the slaughter 
of men, women, and children by her officers, 
for first neglecting her duties as ruler, and then 
putting down rebellion by assassination. The 
plantation of Ulster by James I., and the ac- 
companying forfeiture of Catholic estates, he 
defended on the ground that only the idle rich were 
dispossessed. This is of course socialism pure and 
simple. James I.'s own excuse was that Tyrone 
and Tyrconnell, who owned the greater part of 
Ulster between them, had been implicated in the 
Gunpowder Plot. If they were, the loss of their 
lands was a very mild penalty indeed. 

On the rebellion of 1641, which led to Cromwell's 
terrible retribution, Froude touched lightly. 
Although the number of Protestants who perished 
in the massacre has been exaggerated, the attempts 
of Catholic historians to deny it, or explain it 
away, are futile. Sir William Petty' s figure of 
38,000 is as well authenticated as any. Froude 
of course justifies Cromwell for putting, eight 
years afterwards, the garrisons of Drogheda and 
Wexford to the sword. His characteristic in- 
trepidity was never more fully shown than in 



214 LIFE OF FROUDE 

these appeals to American opinion against the 
Irish race and creed. Unfortunately the practical 
result of them was the reverse of what he 
intended. He preached the gospel of force. Thus 
he expressed it in reply to Cromwell's critics : 
" I say frankly, that I believe the control of human 
things in this world is given to the strong, and 
those who cannot hold their own ground with all 
advantage on their side must bear the conse- 
quences of their weakness." The Holy Inquisition 
might have used this language in Italy or in 
Spain. Any tyrant might use it at any time. It 
was denied in anticipation by an older and 
higher authority than Carlyle in the words *' The 
race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to 
the strong." There is a better morality, if indeed 
there be a worse, than reverence for big battalions. 

Sceptre and crown 

Must topple down, 
And in the earth be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade; 

Only the actions of the just 

Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. 

Froude seldom did things by halves, and his 
apology for Cromwell is not half-hearted. He 
applauds the celebrated pronouncement, " I 
meddle with no man's conscience ; but if you 
mean by liberty of conscience, liberty to have the 
mass, that will not be suffered where the Parha- 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 215 

ment of England has power." A great deal has 
happened since Cromwell's time, and the mass 
is no longer the symbol of intolerance, if only 
because the Church of Rome has no power to 
persecute. Cromwell would have had a short 
shrift if he had fallen into the hands of mass- 
goers. To tolerate intolerance is a Christian 
duty, and therefore possible for an individual. 
Whether it was possible for the Lord General in 
1650 is a question hardly suited for popular 
treatment on a public platform. All that he did 
was right in Froude's eyes, including the prescrip- 
tion of " Hell or Connaught " for ** the men whose 
trade was fighting, who had called themselves 
lords of the soil," and the abolition of the Irish 
Parliament. " I as an Englishman," said Froude, 
** honour Cromwell and glory in him as the greatest 
statesman and soldier our race has produced. 
In the matter we have now in hand I consider 
him to have been the best friend, in the best 
sense, to all that was good in Ireland." This 
is of course an opinion which can honestly be 
held. But to the Irish race all over the world 
such language is an irritating defiance, and they 
simply would not listen to any man who used it. 
The expulsion of Presbyterians under Charles II. 
was foolish as well as cruel, for it deprived the 
English Government in Ireland of their best 
friends, and supplied the American colonies with 
some of their staunchest soldiers in the War of 
Independence. Enough were left, however, to 



2i6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

immortalise the siege of Derry, while the native 
Irish failed to distinguish themselves, or, in plain 
English, ran away, at the Battle of the Boyne, 
and the defeat of James II. was recognised by the 
Treaty of Limerick. An exclusively Protestant 
Parliament was accompanied by such toleration 
as the Catholics had enjoyed under Charles II. 
The infamous law against the Irish trade in wool 
and the episcopal persecution of Nonconformists 
were condemned in just and forcible terms by 
Froude. Episcopal shortcomings seldom escaped 
his vigilant eye. *' I believe," he said, " Bishops 
have produced more mischief in this world than 
any class of officials that have ever been invented." 
The petition of the Irish Parliament for union with 
England in 1703 was refused, madly refused, 
Froude thought; Protestant Dissenters were treated 
as harshly as Catholics, and the commercial 
regulations of the eighteenth century were such 
that smuggling thrived better than any other trade. 
The country was pillaged by absent landlords, 
and ** the mere hint of an absentee tax was suffi- 
cient to throw the younger Pitt into convulsions." 
The Irish Protestant Bishops provoked the savage 
satire of Swift, who doubted not that excellent 
men had been appointed, and only deplored that 
they should be personated by scoundrels who had 
murdered them on Hounslow Heath. 

These lectures stung the Irish to the quick, and 
gave much embarrassment to Froude' s American 
friends. The Irish found a powerful champion 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 217 

in Father Burke, the Dominican friar, who had 
been a popular preacher at Rome, and with an 
audience of his own Cathohc countrymen was 
irresistible. Burke was not a well informed man, 
and his knowledge of history was derived from 
Catholic handbooks. But the occasion did not 
call for dry facts. Froude had not been 
passionless, and what the Irish wanted in reply 
was the rhetorical eloquence which to the Father 
was second nature. Burke, however, had the 
good taste and good sense to acknowledge that 
Froude suffered from nothing worse than the 
invincible prejudice which all Catholics attribute 
to all Protestants. As a Protestant and an 
Englishman, Froude could not be expected to 
give such a history of Ireland as would be agreeable 
to Irishmen. *' Yet to the honour of this learned 
gentleman be it said that he frankly avows the 
injuries which have been done, and that he comes 
nearer than any man whom I have ever heard 
to the real root of the remedy to be applied to 
these evils." When his handling of documentary 
evidence was criticised, Froude repeated his 
challenge to the editor of The Sahirday Review, 
which had never been taken up, and on that point 
the American sense of fair play gave judgment 
in his favour. But how was public opinion to 
pronounce upon such a subject as the alleged 
Bull of Adrian II., granting Ireland to Henry II. 
of England ? The Bull was not in existence, and 
Burke boldly denied that it had ever existed at 



2i8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

all. Froude maintained that its existence and 
its nature were proved by later Bulls of succeeding 
Popes. The matter had no interest for Protestants, 
and the American press regarded it as a bore. 
Burke had more success with the rebellion of 1641, 
and the Cromwellian massacres of 1649. Such 
topics cannot be exhaustively treated in part of 
a single lecture, and Burke could not be expected 
to put the slaughter of true believers on a level 
with irregular justice roughly wreaked upon 
heretics. The combat was not so much unequal 
as impossible. There was no common ground. 
Froude could be fair to an eminent Irishman, 
especially if he were a Protestant. His panegyric 
on Graft an deserves to be quoted alike for its 
eloquence and its justice. " In those singular 
labyrinths of intrigue and treachery," meaning 
the secret correspondence at the Castle, " I have 
found Irishmen whose names stand fair enough 
in patriotic history concerned in transactions that 
show them knaves and scoundrels ; but I never 
found stain nor shadow of stain on the reputation 
of Henry Graft an. I say nothing of the tempta- 
tions to which he was exposed. There were no 
honours with which England would not have 
decorated him ; there was no price so high that 
England would not have paid to have silenced or 
subsidised him. He was one of those perfectly 
disinterested men who do not feel temptations of 
this kind. They passed by him and over him 
without giving him even the pains to turn his back 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 219 

on them. In every step of his hfe he was governed 
simply and fairly by what he conceived to be the 
interest of his country." Grattan's Parliament, 
as we all know, nearly perished in a dispute about 
the Regency, and finally disappeared after the 
rebellion of ^1798. It gave the Catholics votes 
in 1793, though no Catholic ever sat within its 
walls. Grattan, according to Froude, was led 
astray by the " delirium of nationality," and the 
true Irish statesman of his time was Chancellor 
Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, whose name is only less 
abhorred by Irish Nationalists than Cromwell's 
own. Americans did not think nationality a 
delirium, and their ideal of statesmanship was not 
represented by Lord Clare. 

The fifth and last of Froude' s American lectures 
was reprinted in Short Studies with the title of 
" Ireland since the Union." ^ It has a closer bearing 
upon current politics than the others, and it runs 
counter to American as well as to Irish sentiment. 
" Suppose in 9.ny community two-thirds who are 
cowards vote one way, and the remaining third 
will not only vote, but fight the other way." 
The argument has often been used against 
woman's suffrage. One obvious answer is that 
women, like men, would vote on different sides. 
In a community where two-thirds of the adult 
male population were cowards problems of 
government would doubtless assume a secondary 
importance, and that there are limits to the 

1 Vol. ii. pp. 515-598. 



220 LIFE OF FROUDE 

power of majorities no sane ConsLtutionalist 
denies. 

Short of making Carlyle Dictator of . the 
Universe, Froude suggested no alternative to the 
ballot-box of civilised life. This last lecture, 
however, is chiefly remarkable for the rare tribute 
which it pays to the services of the Catholic priest- 
hood. Father Burke himself must have been 
melted when he read, '' Ireland is one of the 
poorest countries in Europe. There is less theft, 
less cheating, less house-breaking, less robbery 
of all sorts, than in any country of the same size 
in the world. In the wild district where I lived 
we slept with unlocked door and open windows, 
with as much security as if we had been — I will 
not say in London or New York, I should be sorry 
to try the experiment in either place : I will say 
as if we had been among the saints in Paradise. 
In the sixteenth century the Irish were notoriously 
regardless of what is technically morality. For 
the last hundred years at least impurity has been 
almost unknown in Ireland. And this absence of 
vulgar crime, and this exceptional delicacy and 
modesty of character, are due alike, to their ever- 
lasting honour, to the influence of the Catholic 
clergy." That is the testimony of an opponent, 
and it is emphatic testimony indeed. To O' Council 
Froude is again conspicuously unjust, and his 
remark that " a few attacks on handfuls of the 
police, or the blowing in of the walls of an English 
prison . . . will not overturn an Empire " is open 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 221 

to the observation that they disestabhshed a 
Church. When Froude came to practical poHtics, 
he always seemed to be '' moving about in worlds 
not realised." His statement that national educa- 
tion in Ireland was the best that existed in any 
part of the Empire almost takes one's breath away, 
and the idea that no Irish legislature would have 
passed the Land Act is a strange fantasy indeed. 
Whether an Irish Parliament could be trusted to 
deal fairly by the landlords is an open question. 
That it would fail to consider the interests of the 
tenants is unthinkable. Froude was on much 
firmer ground when he employed the case of Pro- 
testant Ulster, the Ulster of the Plantation, as an 
argument against Home Rule. Those Protestants 
would, he said, fight rather than submit to a 
Catholic majority, and England could not assent 
to shooting them down. There is only one real 
answer to this objection, and that is that Protestant 
Ulster would do nothing of the kind. A logical 
method of reconciling contradictory prophecies 
has never been found. In 1872 Home Rule had 
no support in England, and even in Ireland the 
electors were pretty equally divided. Froude did 
not lay hold of the American mind, as he might 
have done, by showing the inapplicability of the 
Federal System which suits the United States to 
the circumstances, of the United Kingdom. 

The impression made by Froude upon his 
audiences in New York is graphically described 
by an American reporter. 



222 LIFE OF FROUDE 

" Mr. Froude improved very much in delivery and 
manner during this course of lectures. ... In his 
earlier lectures his ways were awkward, his speech 
was too rapid, and he did not know what in the 
world to do with his hands. It was quite amusing 
to see him run them under his coat tails, spread 
them across his shirt front, stick them in his 
breeches pockets, twirl them in the arm-holes of 
his vest, or hold them behind his back. He has 
now found out how to dispose of them in a more 
or less natural way. His delivery is less rapid, his 
voice better modulated, and his enunciation more 
distinct. . . . One of his most effective pecu- 
liarities, in inviting the attention of his hearers, 
is the exceeding earnestness of the manner of his 
address. This earnestness is not like that of rant. 
It is the result of his own strong conviction and 
his desire to impress others." That is a fair and 
unprejudiced estimate of Froude as he appeared 
to a trained observer, who took neither side in the 
dispute. Many Irishmen shook hands with him, 
and thanked him for his plain speaking. Bret 
Harte told him that even those who dissented 
most widely from his opinions admired his " grit." 
But politicians had to think of the Irish vote, and 
the proprietors of newspapers could not ignore 
their Catholic subscribers. The priests worked 
against him with such effect that Mr. Peabody's 
servants in Boston, who were Irish Catholics, 
threatened to leave their places if Froude remained 
as a guest in their master's house. Father Burke, 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 223 

who had begun poUtely enough, became obstreper- 
ous and abusive. Froude's Ufe was in danger, 
and he was put under the special protection of the 
poHce. The EngUsh newspapers, except The Pall 
Mall Gazette, gave him no support, and The Times 
treated his enterprise as Quixotic. A preposterous 
rumour that he received payment from the British 
Ministry obtained circulation among respectable 
persons in New York. He had intended to visit 
the Western States, but the project was abandoned 
in consequence of growing Irish hostility which 
made him feel that further effort would be use- 
less. It was not that he thought his arguments 
refuted, or capable of refutation. He had con- 
sidered them too long, and too carefully, for that. 
But the well had been poisoned. The malicious 
imputation of bribery was caught up by the 
more credulous Irish, and their priests warned 
them that they would do wrong in listening to a 
heretic. As for the American people, they had 
no mind to take up the quarrel. It was no 
business of theirs. 

Some extracts from Froude's letters to his 
wife will show how much he enjoyed American 
hospitality, and how far he appreciated American 
character. " I was received on Saturday," he 
wrote from New York on the 4th of October, 1872, 
" as a member of .the Lotus Club — the wits and 
journahsts of New York. It was the strangest 
scene I ever was present at. They were very 
clever — very witty at each other's expense, very 



224 LIFE OF FROUDE 

complimentary to me ; and, believe me, they 
worked the publishers who were present for the 
profit they were making out of me." He was 
agreeably surprised by the merchant princes of New 
York. ** There is absolutely no vulgarity about 
them. They are immensely rich, but perfectly 
simple, and rather elaborately * religious ' in the 
forms of their lives. A very long grace is always 
said before dinner. In this and many ways they 
are totally unlike what I expected." Again, 
after a description of Cornell's University, he 
says, " There is Mr. Cornell, who has made all 
this, living in a little poky house in a street with 
a couple of maids, his wife and daughters dressed 
in the homeliest manner. His name will be 
remembered for centuries as having spent his 
wealth in the very best institutions on which a 
country's prosperity depends. Our people spend 
their fortunes in buying great landed estates to 
found and perpetuate their own family. I wonder 
which name will last the longest, Mr. Cornell's 
or Lord Overst one's." ** There is no such thing," 
he says elsewhere, "as founding a family, and 
those who save good fortunes have to give them 
to the public when they die for want of a better 
use to put them to." 

With sincerely religious people, especially if they 
were Evangelicals, Froude felt deep sympathy. 
Patronage of religion he detested, most of all the 
form of it which prescribes religion for other people. 
An American philosopher called, and told him 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 225 

that, having failed to find a new creed, he thought 
the old superstitions had better be kept up, Popery 
for choice. " This," remarks Froude, " is what I 
call want of faith. If you can believe that what 
you are convinced is a lie may nevertheless exert 
a wholesome^ moral influence on people, and that, 
whether true or not, or rather though certainly 
not true, it is good to be preserved and taken up 
with, you are to all practical purposes an 
atheist." 

While he was at Boston Froude saw a great 
fire, and his description of it is hardly inferior to 
the best things in his best books. He was stay- 
ing with George Peabody, equally well known in 
England and the United States as a philanthropist, 
" one of the sweetest and gentlest of beings." 
" As we were sitting after dinner, the children said 
there was a fire somewhere. They heard the alarm 
bell, and saw a red light in the sky. Presently 
we saw flames. Mr. Peabody was uneasy, and I 
walked out with him to see. Between the house 
here and the town lies the Common or City Park. 
As we crossed this, the signs became more ominous. 
We made our way into the principal street through 
the crowd, and then, looking down a cross street 
full of enormous warehouses, saw both sides of 
it in flames. The streets were full of steam 
fire-engines, all roaring and playing, but the houses 
were so high anii large, and the volumes of fire 
so prodigious, that their water-jets looked like 
so many squirts. As we stood, we saw the fire 

(2310) 15 



226 LIFE OF FROUDE 

grow. Block caught after block. I myself saw 
one magnificent store catch at the lower windows. 
In a few seconds the flame ran up storey after 
storey, spouting out at the different landings 
as it rose. It reached the roof with a spring, 
and the place was gone. There was nothing to 
stop it. Our people were sure that it would be 
another Chicago. The night was fine and frosty, 
with a light north-easterly breeze against which 
the fire was advancing. We stayed an hour or 
two. There seemed no danger for Mr. Peabody's 
bank. He was evidently, however, extremely 
harassed and anxious, as he held the bonds of 
innumerable merchants whose property was being 
destroyed. I thought I was in his way, and left 
him, and came home to tell the family what was 
going on. After I left the fire travelled faster 
than ever. Huge rolls of smoke swelled up fold 
after fold. The under folds crimson and glowing 
yellow from the flames below, sparks flying up 
like rocket stars. A petroleum store caught, 
and the flames ran about in rivers, and above all 
the steel blue moon shone through the rents of 
the rolling vapour, and the stars with an intensity 
of brilliant calm such as we never see in England. 
It was a night to be eternally remembered." 

A great many Irish families were made homeless 
by this fire, and Froude subscribed seven hundred 
dollars for their relief, thereby encouraging the 
rumour that he was in the pay of the British 
Minister whom he dishked and distrusted most. 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 227 

Froude's final view of America and Americans 
was in some respects less favourable than his first 
impressions. He was struck by the difference 
between their public and private treatment of 
himself, between their conversation and the articles 
in their press. " From what I see of the Eastern 
States I do not anticipate any very great things 
as likely to come out of the Americans. Their 
physical frames seem hung together rather than 
organically grown. . . . They are generous with 
their money, have much tenderness and quiet 
good feeling ; but the Anglo-Saxon power is 
running to seed, and I don't think will revive. 
Puritanism is dead, and the collected sternness 
of temperament which belonged to it is dead 
also." 

This language seems strange, written as it was 
only seven years after the great war. Froude, 
however, considered that there was much hysterical 
passion in the policy of the North, and he shared 
Carlyle's dislike of democratic institutions. More- 
over, he was disappointed with the result of his 
mission. The case seemed so clear to him that he 
could not understand why it should seem less clear 
to others. He believed that if the priests could 
have been driven out of Ireland by William of 
Orange, the more fanatical Catholics would have 
followed them, and Ireland would have become 
prosperous, contented, and loyal. To an American 
Republican such ideas were as repugnant as they 
were to an Irish Catholic. An American could 



228 LIFE OF FROUDE 

understand the argument that Home Rule was 
impracticable, because a Federal Constitution did 
not apply to the circumstances of the United 
Kingdom. He would not readily believe that the 
Irish were by nature incapable of self-government, 
or that Englishmen must know better what was 
good for them than they knew themselves. For 
Cromwell he could make allowance. The Protector 
had to deal with a Catholicism which would have 
made an end of him and restored Charles II. But 
times had changed. Catholics had abandoned 
persecution, and ought not to be punished for 
the sins of their fathers. The Irish did not claim, 
as the Southern States had claimed, the right to 
secede, but to exercise the powers inherent in 
every State of the American Union. 

Carlyle warmly approved of Froude's under- 
taking, and persisted in believing that it had done 
good by forcing the American public to see that 
there were two sides to the historic question, an 
English side as well as an Irish one. He was 
so far right, and with that quahfied success Froude 
had to be content. His champion, whose opinion 
was more to him than any other, than any number 
of others, wrote to Mrs. Froude on the 5th 
of December, 1872 : " The rest of the affair, all 
that loud whirlwind of Bully Burke, Saturday 
Review and Co., both at home and abroad, I take 
to be, in essence, absolutely nothing ; and to 
deserve from him no more regard than the barking 
of dogs, or the braying of asses. He may depend 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 229 

on it, what he is saying about Ireland is the 
genuine truth, or the nearest to it that has ever 
been said by any person whatever ; and I hope 
he knows long ere this (if he likes to consider it) 
that the truth alone is anything, and all the 
circumambient balderdash and whirlwinds of 
nonsense tumbling round it are, and eternally 
remain, nothing. Tell him I have read his book, 
and know others that have read it with attention ; 
and that their and my clear opinion is as 
above. To myself there is a ring in it as of 
clear steel ; and my prophecy is that all the 
roaring blockheads of the world cannot prevent 
its natural effect on human souls. Sooner or later 
all persons will have to believe it." Carlyle 
seldom qualified his approval, and his earnest 
advocacy was to Froude a recompense beyond 
all price. 

The first volume of Froude' s English in Ireland 
in the Eighteenth Century, to which Carlyle refers, 
had been published at home while the author was 
lecturing on the Irish question to the people of 
the United States. Like the lectures, on a more 
thorough and comprehensive scale, it is a bold 
indictment of the Irish nation. Froude could 
not write without a purpose, nor forget that he 
was an Englishman and a Protestant. Before 
he had finished a single chapter of his new book he 
had stated in uncompromising language his opinion 
of the Irish race. " Passionate in everything — 
passionate in their patriotism, passionate in their 



230 LIFE OF FROUDE 

religion, passionately courageous, passionately 
loyal and affectionate — they are without the 
manliness which would give strength and solidity 
to the sentimental part of their dispositions ; while 
the surface and show is so seductive and winning 
that only experience of its instability can resist 
its charm." ^ Such summary judgments are 
seldom accurate. Every one must be acquainted 
with individual Irishmen who do not correspond 
with Froude's general description. Nor does 
Froude always take into account the shrewdness, 
the humour, the genius for politics, which have 
distinguished Irishmen throughout the world. 
Impressed with this view of the Irish character, 
he held that forbearance in dealing with Irish 
rebellions was misplaced, that Irishmen respected 
only an authority with which they durst not 
trifle, and that universal confiscation should have 
followed the defeat of Shan O'Neill. 

These, however, were preliminary matters. When 
he came to the eighteenth century Froude had to 
consider details, and here his prejudice against 
Catholicism led him astray. In the reign of 
George II. acts of lawless violence were not 
uncommon on this side of the Channel, and 
Richardson's Clarissa was read with a credulity 
which showed that abduction could be committed 
without being followed by punishment. In parts 
of Ireland it was not an infrequent offence, and 
Froude collected some abominable cases, which 

* Vol. i, pps 21, 22, 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 231 

he described in his picturesque way.^ As examples 
of disregard for humanity, and contempt for law, 
he was fully justified in citing them. But he 
endeavoured to throw responsibility for these 
outrages on the Roman Catholic Church. *' Young 
gentlemen," he says, " of the Catholic persuasion 
were in the habit of recovering equivalents for the 
lands of which they considered themselves to have 
been robbed, and of recovering souls at the same 
time by carrying off young Protestant girls of 
fortune to the mountains, ravishing them there 
with the most exquisite brutality, and then com- 
pelling them to go through a form of marriage, 
which a priest was always in attendance ready 
to celebrate." ^ This is a very serious charge, 
perhaps as serious a charge as could well be made 
against a religious communion. It was an accusa- 
tion improbable on the face of it ; for while the 
Church of Rome in the course of her strange, 
eventful history has tampered with the sixth 
commandment, as Protestants call it, she has 
never underrated the virtue of chastity, and has 
always proclaimed a high standard of sexual 
morals. In his zeal to justify the penal laws 
against Catholics Froude accepted without suffi- 
cient inquiry evidence which could only have 
satisfied one willing to beUeve the worst. 

Several years afterwards, in 1878, the subject 
was fully discussed, and Froude' s conclusions 

* English in Ireland, vol. i. pp. 417-434. 
^ Ihid., p. 417. 



232 LIFE OF FROUDE 

were shown to be unsound, by another historian, 
WiUiam Edward Hartpo.le Lecky. Lecky was a 
much more formidable critic than Freeman. 
Calm in temperament and moderate in language, 
he could take part in an historical controversy 
without getting into a rage. Freeman, after 
pages of mere abuse, would pounce with trium- 
phant ejaculations upon a misprint. Lecky did 
not waste his time either on scolding or on trifles. 
The faults he found were grave, and his censure 
was not the less severe for being decorous. An 
Anglicised Irishman, living in England, though 
a graduate of Dublin University, Lecky became 
known when he was a very young man for a 
brilliant little book on Leaders of Irish Opinion. 
He had since published mature and valuable his- 
tories of rationalism, and of morals. His History 
of England in the Eighteenth Century is likely 
to remain a standard book, being written with 
fairness, lucidity, and candour. It is true that 
in his Irish chapters, with which alone I am con- 
cerned, Lecky, like Froude, wrote with a purpose. 
He was an Irish patriot, and bent on making out 
the best possible case for his own country. 

At the same time he was, for an Irishman, 
singularly impartial between Catholic and Pro- 
testant, leaning, if at all, to the Protestant side. 
Yet he repudiated with indignant vehemence 
Froude' s attempt to connect the Catholic Church 
with these atrocious crimes. I am bound to say 
that I think he disproves the charge of ecclesiastical 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 233 

complicity. The evidence upon which Froude 
reHed, the only evidence accessible, is the collec- 
tion of presentments by Grand Juries, with the 
accompanying depositions, in Dublin Castle. In 
the first sixty years of the eighteenth century 
there were t>Venty-eight cases of abduction thus 
recorded. In only four of them can it be shown 
that the perpetrator was a Catholic and the 
victim a Protestant. In only one, which Froude 
has described at much length, did the criminal 
try to make a Protestant girl attend mass. For 
one of the cases, which according to Froude went 
unpunished, two men were hanged. " The truth 
is," says Lecky, " that the crime was merely the 
natural product of a state of great lawlessness 
and barbarism." ^ These offences have so com- 
pletely disappeared from Ireland that even the 
memory of them has perished, and yet Ireland 
remains as Catholic as ever. Arthur Young, who 
denounces them as scandalous to a civilised 
community, does not hint that they had anything 
to do with religion, nor were they ever cited 
in defence of the penal code. Froude was led 
astray by religious prejudice, and forgot for once 
the historian in the advocate. The penal codes 
were rather the cause than the effect of crime and 
outrage in Ireland. By setting authority on one 
side, and popular religion on the other, they made 
a breach of the law a pious and meritorious act. 
The bane of English rule in Ireland at that time 

^ England in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 365. 



234 LIFE OF FROUDE 

was the treatment of Catholics as enemies, and the 
Charter Schools which Froude praises were em- 
ployed for the purpose of alienating children from 
the faith of their parents. This mean and paltry 
persecution strengthened intead of weakening the 
Roman Catholic Church. 

Meanwhile Froude continued his History, and 
by the beginning of the year 1874 had brought it 
down to the Union, with which it concludes. No 
more unsparing indictment of a nation has ever 
been drawn. Except Lord Clare, and the Orange 
Lodges, formed after the Battle of the Diamond, 
scarcely an Irishman or an Irish institution is 
spared. Grattan's Parliament, though it did not 
contain a single Catholic, is condemned be- 
cause it gave the Catholics votes in 1793. The 
recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, an Englishman and a 
Protestant, in 1795, is justified because he was in 
favour of emancipation. Flood and Curran are 
treated with disdain. Burke, though he was 
no more a Catholic than Froude himself, is told 
that he was not a true Protestant, and did not 
understand his own countrymen. Sir Ralph 
Abercrombie was possessed with an " evil spirit," 
because he urged that rebels should not be 
punished by soldiers without the sanction of the 
civil magistrate. His successor. General Lake, 
who was responsible for pitch-caps, receives a 
gentle, a very gentle, reprimand. 

" The United Irishmen had affected the fashion 
of short hair. The loyalists called them Croppies, 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 235 

and if a Croppy prisoner stood silent when it was 
certain [without a trial] that he could confess 
with effect, paper or linen caps smeared with 
pitch were forced upon his head to bring him to 
his senses. Such things ought not to have been, 
and such thiAgs would not have been had General 
Lake been supplied with English troops, but assas- 
sins and their accomplices will not always be 
delicately handled by those whose lives they have 
threatened occasionally. Not a few men suffered 
who were innocent, so far as no definite guilt could 
be proved against them. At such times, however, 
those who are not actively loyal lie in the border- 
land of just suspicion." ^ That all Irish Catholics 
were guilty unless they could prove themselves 
to be innocent is a proposition which cannot be 
openly maintained, and vitiates history if it be 
tacitly assumed. Froude honestly and sincerely 
believed that the Irish people were unfit for 
representative government. He compares the 
Irish rebellion of 1798 with the Indian Mutiny of 
1857, 3.nd suggests that Ireland should have been 
treated likeOude. LordMoira, known afterwards 
as Lord Hastings, and Governor-General of India, 
is called a traitor because he sympathised wth the 
aspirations of his countrymen. Lord Cornwallis 
is severely censured for endeavouring to infuse a 
spirit of moderation into the Executive after the 
rebellion had been put down. What Cornwallis 
thought of the means by which the Union was 

^ English in Ireland, iii. ^^6. 



236 LIFE OF FROUDE 

carried is well known. " I long," he said in 1799, 
** to kick those whom my public duty obliges me 
to court. My occupation is to negociate and job 
with the most corrupt people under heaven. I 
despise and hate myself every hour for engaging 
in such dirty work, and am supported only by 
the reflection that without a Union the British 
Empire must be dissolved." That is the real 
case for the Union, which could not be better 
stated than Cornwallis has stated it. Carried by- 
corrupt means as it was, it might have met with 
gradual acquiescence if only it had been accom- 
panied, as Pitt meant to accompany it, by Catholic 
emancipation. On this point Froude goes all 
lengths with George III., whose hatred of Catho- 
licism was not greater than his own. In the 
development of his theory, he was courageous and 
consistent. He struck at great names, denouncing 
" the persevering disloyalty of the Liberal party, 
in both Houses of the English Legislature," in- 
cluding Fox, Sheridan, Tierney, Holland, the 
Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk, who dared to 
propose a policy of conciliation with Ireland, as 
Burke had proposed it with the American colonies. 
Even Pitt does not come up to Fronde's standard, 
for Pitt removed Lord Camden, and sent out 
Lord Cornwallis. 

It is no disqualification for an historian to 
hold definite views, which, if he holds them, 
it must surely be his duty to express. The 
fault of The English in Ireland is to overstate 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 237 

the case, to make it appear that there was 
no ground for rebelHon in 1798, and no objec- 
tion to union in 1800. The whole book is 
written on the supposition that the Irish are an 
inferior race and Cathohcism an inferior rehgion. 
So far as religion was concerned, Lecky did not 
disagree with Froude. But either because he was 
an Irishman, or because he had a judicial mind, 
he could see the necessity of understanding what 
Irish Catholics aimed at before passing judgment 
upon them. Froude could never get out of his 
mind the approval of treason and assassination 
to which in the sixteenth century the Vatican was 
committed. It may be fascinating polemics to 
taunt the Church of Rome with being '* always 
the same." But as a matter of fact the Church is 
not the same. It improves with the general march 
of the progress that it condemns. Froude fairly 
and honourably quotes a crucial instance. Pitt 
" sought the opinion of the Universities of France 
and Spain on the charge generally alleged against 
Catholics that their allegiance to their sovereign 
was subordinate to their allegiance to the Pope ; 
that they held that heretics might lawfully be 
put to death, and that no faith was to be kept 
with them. The Universities had unanimously 
disavowed doctrines which they declared at once 
inhuman and unchristian, and on the strength of 
the disavowal the British Parliament repealed 
the Penal Acts of AVilliam for England and 
Scotland, restored to the^Catholics the free use 



238 LIFE OF FROUDE 

of their chapels, and readmitted them to the 
magistracy." Toleration was extended to Ireland 
by giving the franchise to Catholics, and complete 
emancipation might have followed but for the 
interference of the king, which involved the recall 
of Lord Fitz William. 

To prevent that calamitous measure no one 
worked harder than Edmund Burke, whose 
religion was as rational as his patriotism was 
sincere. In the last of his published letters, 
written to vSir Hercules Langrishe, in the year 
before the rebellion, the year of his own death, 
he said that '* Ireland, locally, civilly, and com- 
mercially independent, ought politically to look 
up to Great Britain in all matters of peace or war; 
in all those points to be guided by her: and in a 
word, with her to live and to die." *' At bottom," 
he added, " Ireland has no other choice ; I mean 
no other rational choice." To a Parliamentary 
Union accompanied by emancipation Burke might 
have been brought by the rebellion. Protestant 
ascendency as understood in his time he would 
always have repudiated, if only because it furnished 
recruits to the Jacobinism which he loathed more 
than anything else in the world. He even denied 
that there was such a thing as the Protestant 
religion. The difference between Protestantism 
and Catholicism was, he said, a negative, and out 
of a negative no religion could be made. To 
persecute people for believing too much was even 
more preposterous than to persecute them for 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 239 

believing too little. Protestant ascendency was 
social ascendency, and had no motive so respect- 
able as bigotry behind it. Burke never conceived 
the possibility of disestablishing the Irish Church, 
or even of curtailing its emoluments. He would 
have been satisfied with a Parliament from which 
Catholics were not excluded. Froude brushed 
almost contemptuously aside the theories of an 
illustrious Irishman, the first political writer of his 
age, and an almost fanatical enemy of revolution. 
Genius apart, Burke was peculiarly well quali- 
fied to form an opinion. He knew England as 
well as Ireland ; and imperial as his conceptions 
were, they never extinguished his love for the 
land of his birth. He was himself a member of 
the Estabhshed Church, and a firm supporter of 
her connection with the State. But his wife was 
a Roman Catholic, and for the old faith he had a 
sympathetic respect. For the French Directory, 
with which Wolfe Tone was associated, he felt 
a passionate hatred of which he has left a monu- 
ment more durable than brass in the Reflections 
on the French Revolution, and the Letters on a 
Regicide Peace. He worshipped the British Con- 
stitution with the unquestioning fervour of a 
devotee, and he had been attacked by the new 
WTiigs in Parliament as the recipient of a pension 
from the king. The old Whigs, his Whigs, had 
coalesced with Pitt, and the chief fault he found 
with the Government was that it did not carry 
on the French war with sufficient vigour. That 



240 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Burke should have retained his calmness of mind 
in writing of Ireland when he lost it in writing 
of all other subjects is a curious circumstance. 
But it is a circumstance which entitles him to 
peculiar attention from the Irish historian. Burke 
was no oracle of Irish revolutionists. Their hero 
was his critic, Tom Paine. Yet Froude says that 
when Burke " took up the Irish cause at last in 
earnest, it was with a brain which the French 
Revolution had deranged, and his interference 
became infinitely mischievous." ^ As a matter 
of fact, his interference after 1789 had no result 
at all. So far as the French Revolution modified 
his ideas, it made them more Conservative than 
ever, and his object in preaching the conciliation 
of Catholics was to deter them from Revolutionary 
methods. 

But Burke, like Grattan, was an Irishman, and 
therefore not to be trusted. If he had been 
an Englishman, or if he had gloried in the name 
of Protestant, Froude' s eyes would have been 
opened, and he would have seen Burke's incom- 
parable superiority to Lord Clare as a just 
interpreter of events. Froude looked at the 
rebellion and the Union from an Orange Lodge, 
and his book is really an Orange manifesto. Such 
works have their purpose, and Froude' s is an 
unusually eloquent specimen of its class; but 
they are not history, any more than the speech 
of Lord Clare on the Union, or the Diary of Wolfe 

^ English in Ireland, ii. 214, 215. 



— - 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 241 

Tone. Froude does not explain, nor seem to 
understand, what the supporters of the Irish 
Legislature meant. Speaker Foster said that the 
whole unbribed intellect of Ireland was against 
the Union. Foster was the last Speaker in the 
Irish Housfe of Commons. He had been elected 
in 1790 against the " patriot " Ponsonby, and 
was opposed to the Catholic franchise in 1793. 
He was a man of unblemished character, and in 
a position where he could not afford to talk non- 
sense. Yet, if Froude were right, nonsense he 
must have talked. Cornwallis, an Englishman, 
corroborates Foster; Cornwallis is disregarded. 
" All that was best and noblest in Ireland " was 
gathered into the Orange Association, which has 
been the plague of every Irish Government since 
the Union = Froude's model sovereign of Ireland, 
as of England, was George III., who ordered that 
in a Catholic country " a sharp eye should be kept 
on Papists," and would doubtless have joined 
an Orange Lodge himself if he had been an Irishman 
and a subject. The English in Ireland is reported 
to have been Parnell's favourite book. It made 
him, he said, a Home Ruler because it exposed 
the iniquities of the English Government. This 
was not Froude's principal object, but the testi- 
mony to his truthfulness is all the more striking 
on that account. Gladstone, who quoted from 
the English in' Ireland when he introduced his 
Land Purchase Bill in 1886, paid a just tribute 
to the "truth and honour" of the writer. 
(2310) i5 



242 LIFE OF FROUDE 

If it be once granted that the Irish are a subject 
race, that the Cathohc faith is a degrading super- 
stition, and that Ireland is only saved from ruin 
by her English or Scottish settlers, Froude's book 
deserves little but praise. Although he did not 
study for it as he studied for his History of England 
he read and copied a large number of State Papers, 
with a great mass of official correspondence. 
Freeman would have been appalled at the idea 
of such research as Froude made in Dublin, and 
at the Record Office in London. But the scope 
of his book, and the thesis he was to develop, 
had formed themselves in his mind before he 
began. He was to vindicate the Protestant cause 
in Ireland, and to his own satisfaction he vindicated 
it. If I may apply a phrase coined many years 
afterwards, Froude assumed that Irish Catholics 
had taken a double dose of original sin. He always 
found in them enough vice to account for any 
persecution of which they might be the victims. 
Just as he could not write of Kerry without 
imputing failure and instability to O'Connell, so he 
could not write about Ireland without traducing the 
leaders of Irish opinion. They might be Protest- 
ants themselves ; but they had Catholics for their 
followers, and that was enough. It was enough for 
Carlyle also, and to attack Froude's historical 
reputation is to attack Carlyle's. " I have read," 
Carlyle wrote on the 20th of June, 1874, *' all your 
book carefully over again, and continue to think of 
it not less but rather more favourably than ever : 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 243 

a few little phrases and touches you might perhaps 
alter with advantage ; and the want of a copious, 
carefully weighed concluding chapter is more 
sensible to me than ever ; but the substance of the 
book is genuine truth, and the utterance of it is 
clear, sharp,' smiting, and decisive, hke a shining 
Damascus sabre ; I never doubted or doubt but 
its effect will be great and lasting. No criticism 
have I seen since you went away that was worth 
notice. Poor Lecky is weak as water — bilge-water 
with a drop of formic acid in it : unfortunate Lecky, 
he is wedded to his Irish idols ; let him alone." 
The reference to Lecky, as unfair as it is amusing, 
was provoked by a review of Froude in Macmillan's 
Magazine. There are worse idols than Burke, or 
even Grattan, and Lecky was an Irishman after all. 

A very different critic from Carlyle expressed 
an equally favourable opinion. 

*' I have an interesting letter," Froude wrote to 
his friend Lady Derby, formerly Lady Salisbury, 
" from Bancroft the historian (American minister 
at Berhn) on the Irish book. He, I am happy to 
say, accepts the view which I wished to impress 
on the Americans, and he has sent me some 
curious correspondence from the French Foreign 
Office illustrating and confirming one of my points. 
One evening last summer I met Lady Salisbury,^ 
and told her my opinion of Lord Clare. She dis- 
sented with characteristic emphasis — and she is not 
a lady who can easily be moved from her judg- 

1 The wife of the late Prime Minister, 



244 LIFE OF FROUDE 

ments. Still, if she finds time to read the book I 
should like to hear that she can recognise the merits 
as well as the demerits of a statesman who, in the 
former at least, so nearly resembled her husband." 

In another letter he says : 

" The meaning of the book as a whole is to 
show what comes of forcing uncongenial institu- 
tions on a country to which they are unsuited. 
If we had governed Ireland as we govern India, 
there would have been no confiscation, no perse- 
cution of religion, and consequently none of the 
reasons for disloyalty. Having chosen to set up a 
Parliament and an Established Church, and to seize 
the lands of the old owners, we left nothing undone 
to spoil the chances of success with the experiment." 

Froude went to the United States with no very 
exalted opinion of the Irish; he returned with 
the lowest possible. " Like all Irish patriots," 
including Grattan, Wolfe Tone " would have 
accepted greedily any tolerable appointment from 
the Government which he had been execrating.'' 
The subsequent history of Ireland has scarcely 
justified this sweeping invective. " There are 
persons who believe that if the king had not 
interfered with Lord Fitzwilliam, the Irish Catho- 
lics would have accepted gratefully the religious 
equality which he was prepared to offer them, and 
would , have remained thenceforward for all time 
contented citizens of the British Empire." So 
reasonable a theory requires more convincing 
refutation than a simple statement that it is 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 245 

" incredible." Incredible, no doubt, if the Catho- 
lics of Ireland were wild beasts, cringing under 
the whip J ferocious when released from restraint. 
Very credible indeed if Irish Catholics in 1795 
were like other people, asking for justice, and not 
expecting aA impossible ascendency. Interesting 
as Froude's narrative is, it becomes, when read 
together with Lecky's, more interesting still. 
Though indignant with Froude's aspersions upon 
the Irish race, Lecky did not allow himself to be 
hurried. He was writing a history of England as 
well as of Ireland, and the Irish chapters had to 
wait their turn. In Froude's book there are signs 
of haste ; in Lecky's there are none. Without the 
brilliancy and the eloquence which distinguished 
Froude, Lecky had a power of marshalling facts 
that gave to each of them its proper value. No 
human being is without prejudice. But Lecky was 
curiously unlike the typical Irishman of Froude's 
imagination. He has written what is by general 
acknowledgment the fairest account of the Irish 
rebellion, and of the Union to which it led. Of 
the eight volumes which compose his History of 
England in the Eighteenth Century, two, the seventh 
and eighth, are devoted exclusively to Ireland. 

After the publication of his first two volumes 
he made no direct reference to Froude, and 
contented himself with his own independent 
narrative. He 'vindicated the conduct of Lord 
FitzwiUiam, and traced to his recall in 1795 the 
desperate courses adopted by Irish Catholics, He 



246 LIFE OF FROUDE 

showed that Froude had been unjust to the Whigs 
who gave evidence for Arthur O'Connor at Maid- 
stone in 1798, and especially to Grattan. That 
O'Connor was engaged in treasonable correspon- 
dence with France there can be no doubt now. 
But he did not tell his secrets to his Whig friends, 
and what Grattan said of his never having 
heard O'Connor talk about a French invasion 
was undoubtedly true.^ Fronde's hatred of the 
EngUsh Whigs almost equalled his contempt for 
the Irish Catholics, and the two feelings prevented 
him from writing anything Hke an impartial 
narrative either of the rebellion or of the Union. 
No other book of his shows such evident traces 
of having been written under the influence of 
Carlyle. Carlyle's horror of democracy, his 
worship of force, his behef that martial law 
was the law of Almighty God, and that cruelty 
might always be perpetrated on the right side, 
are conspicuously displayed. If Froude spoke of 
the Roman Catholic Church, he always seemed 
to fancy himself back in the sixteenth century, 
when the murder of Protestants was regarded 
at the Vatican as justifiable. The Irish rebellion 
of 1798 was led by Protestants, like Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, and free thinkers, like Wolfe Tone. 
But for the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, the Catholics 
would have taken no part in it, and it would not 
have been more dangerous than the rebellion of 

* See Froude's EngUsh in Ireland, vol, iii. pp. 320, 321 ; Lecky's 
History of England, vol. viii. p. 52. 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 247 

1848. Such at least was Lecky's opinion, sup- 
ported by weighty arguments, and by facts which 
cannot be denied. If Froude's reputation as an 
historian depended upon his English in Ireland, 
it certainly would not stand high. Of course 
he had as much right to put the English case as 
Father Burke had to put the Irish one. But 
his responsibility was far greater, and his splendid 
talents might have been better employed than 
in reviving the mutual animosities of religion or 
of race. 

When Lecky reviewed, with much critical 
asperity, the last two volumes of Froude's English 
in Ireland for Macmillan's Magazine ^ he referred 
to Home Rule as a moderate and constitutional 
movement. His own History was not completed 
till 1890. But when Gladstone introduced his 
first Home Rule Bill, in 1886, Lecky opposed it 
as strongly as Froude himself. Lecky was quite 
logical, for the question whether the Union had 
been wisely or legitimately carried had very little 
to do with the expedience of repealing it. Fieri 
non dehuit, factum valet, may be common sense 
as well as good law. But Froude was not 
unnaturally triumphant to find his old antagonist 
in Irish matters on his side, especially as Freeman 
was a Home Ruler. Froude's attitude was never 
for a moment doubtful. He had always held 
that the Irish people were quite unfitted for 
self-government, and of all English statesmen 

1 June, 1874. 



248 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Gladstone was the one he trusted least. He 
had a theory that great orators were always 
wrong, even when, like Pitt and Fox, they 
were on opposite sides. Gladstone he doubly re- 
pudiated as a High Churchman and a Democrat. 
Yet, with more candour than consistency, he 
always declared that Gladstone was the English 
statesman who best understood the Irish Land 
Question, and so he plainly told the Liberal 
Unionists, speaking as one of themselves. He 
had praised Henry VIII. for confiscating the 
Irish estates of absentees, and taunted Pitt with 
his unreasoning horror of an absentee tax. He 
would have given the Irish people almost every- 
thing rather than allow them to do anything for 
themselves. In 1880 he brought out another 
edition of his Irish book, with a new chapter on 
the crisis. The intervening years had made no 
difference in his estimate of Ireland, or of Irishmen. 
O'Connell, who had nothing to do with the poHtics 
of the eighteenth century, was "not sincere about 
repeal," although he " forced the Whigs to give 
him whatever he might please to ask for," ^ and 
he certainly asked for that. 

That Catholic emancipation was useless and 
mischievous, Froude never ceased to declare. He 
would have dragooned the Irish into Protestantism 
and made the three Catholic provinces into a Crown 
colony. The Irish establishment he regretted as 
a badge of Protestant ascendency. But he was a 

1 English in Ireland, 1881, vol. iii. p. 568, 



IRELAND AND AMERICA 249 

dangerous ally for Unionists. That the govern- 
ment of Ireland by what he called a Protestant 
Parliament sitting at Westminister, meaning the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom, had failed, 
he not merely admitted, but loudly proclaimed. 
It had failed ** more signally, and more disgrace- 
fully," than any other system, because Gladstone 
admitted that Fenian outrages precipitated legis- 
lative reforms. The alternative was to rule 
Ireland, or let her be free, and altogether separate 
from Great Britain. Neither branch of the sup- 
posed alternative was within the range of practical 
politics. But on one point Froude unconsciously 
anticipated the immediate future. ** The remedy " 
for the agrarian troubles of Ireland was, he said, 
" the establishment of courts to which the tenant 
might appeal." The ink of this sentence was 
scarcely dry when the Irish Land Bill of 1881 
appeared with that very provision. Froude was 
always ready and willing to promote the material 
benefit of Ireland. Irishmen, except the Protestant 
population of Ulster, were children to be treated 
with firmness and kindness, the truest kindness 
being never to let them have their own way. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOUTH AFRICA 

BEFORE Froude had written the last chapter 
of The English in Ireland he was visited by 
the greatest sorrow of his hfe. Mrs. Froude died 
suddenly in February, 1874. It had been a perfect 
marriage, and he never enjoyed the same entire 
happiness afterwards. Carlyle and his faithful 
friend Fitzjames Stephen were the only persons he 
could see at first, though he manfully completed 
the book on which he was engaged. It was long 
before he rallied from the shock, and he felt as 
if he could never write again. He dreaded '' the 
length of years which might yet lie ahead of him 
before he could have his discharge from service." 
He took a melancholy pride in noting that none 
of the reviewers discovered any special defects 
in those final pages of his book which had been 
written under such terrible conditions. Mrs. 
Froude had thoroughly understood all her hus- 
band's moods, and her quiet humour always 
cheered him in those hours of gloom from which 
a man of his sensitive nature could not escape. 
She could use a gentle mockery which was 

always effective, along with her common sense, 

250 



SOUTH AFRICA 251 

in bringing out the true proportions of things. 
Conscious as she was of his social brilhancy and 
success, she would often tell the children that 
they lost nothing by not going out with him, 
because their father talked better at home than 
he talked anywhere else. Her deep personal 
religion was the form of belief with which he had 
most sympathy, and which he best understood, 
regarding it as the foundation of virtue and 
conduct and honour and truth. He attended 
with her the services of the Church, which satis- 
fied him whenever they were performed with 
the reverent simplicity familiar to his boyhood. 
Happily he was not left alone. He had two young 
children to love, and his eldest daughter was able 
to take her stepmother's place as mistress of his 
house. With the children he left London as soon 
as he could, and tried to occupy his mind by 
reading to them from Don Quixote^ or, on a Sunday, 
from The Pilgrim's Progress. To the end of his 
life he felt his loss ; and when he was offered, 
fifteen years later, the chance of going back to his 
beloved Derreen, he shrank from the associations 
it would have recalled. 

He took a house for his family in Wales, which 
he described in the following letter to Lady Derby : 

"Crogan House, Corwen, June T,rd, 1874. 

"I do not know if I told you upon what a 
curious and interesting old place we have fallen 
for our retirement. The walls of the room in 



252 LIFE OF FROUDE 

which I am writing are five feet thick. The old 
part of the house must have been an Abbey- 
Grange ; the cellars run into a British tumulus, 
the oaks in the grounds must many of them be 
as old as the Conquest, and the site of the parish 
church was a place of pilgrimage probably before 
Christianity. Stone coffins are turned over on 
the hillsides in making modern improvements. 
Denfil Gadenis' (the mediaeval Welsh saint's) 
wooden horn still stands in the church porch, 
and the sense of strangeness and antiquity is the 
more palpable because hardly a creature in the 
valley, except the cows and the birds, speak in 
a language familiar to me. It was Owen Glen- 
dower's country. Owen himself doubtless has 
many times ridden down the avenue. We are in 
the very heart of Welsh nationality, which was 
always a respectable thing — far more so than the 
Celticism of the Gaels and Irish. We are apt to 
forget that the Tudors were Welsh." 

Fortunately a plan suggested itself which gave 
him variety of occupation and change of scene. 
Disraeli's Government had just come into office, 
and with the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, 
Froude was on intimate terms. Froude had 
always been interested in the Colonies, and was 
an advocate of Federation long before it had 
become a popular scheme. As early as 1870 he 
wrote to Skelton : *' Gladstone and Co. deliberately 
intend to shake off the Colonies. They are 
privately using their command of the situation 



SOUTH AFRICA 253 

to make the separation inevitable." ^ I do not 
know what this means. Lord Dufferin has left it 
on record that after his appointment to Canada 
in 1872 Lowe came up to him at the club, and 
said, " Now, you ought to make it your business 
to get rid o^ the Dominion." But Lowe was in 
the habit of saying paradoxical things, and it was 
Disraeli, not Gladstone, who spoke of the Colonies 
as millstones round our necks. Cardwell, the 
Secretary for War, withdrew British troops from 
Canada and New Zealand, holding that the self- 
governing Colonies should be responsible for their 
own defence. That wise policy fostered union 
rather than separation, by providing that the 
working classes at home should not be taxed for 
the benefit of their colonial fellow-subjects. Lord 
Carnarvon himself had passed in 1867 the Bill 
which federated Canada and which his Liberal 
predecessor had drawn. He was now anxious to 
carry out a similar scheme in South Africa, and 
Froude offered to find out for him how the land 
lay. His visit was not to be in any sense official. 
He would be ostensibly travelling for his health, 
which was always set up by a voyage. He was 
interested in extending to South Africa Miss 
Rye's benevolent plans of emigration to Canada ; 
in the treatment of a Kaffir chief called Langa- 
libalele ; and in the disputes which had arisen 
from the annexation of the Diamond Fields. Thus 
there were reasons for his trip enough and to 

^ Table Talk of Shirley, p, 142. 



254 LIFE OF FROUDE 

spare. He would, it was thought, be more likely 
to obtain accurate information if the principal 
purpose of his visit were kept in the background. 

There was one great and fundamental difference 
between the case of Canada and the case of South 
Africa. Canada had itself asked for federation, 
and Parliament simply gave effect to the wish of 
the Canadians. Opinion in South Africa was 
notoriously divided, and the centre of opposition 
was at Cape Town. Natal had not yet obtained 
a full measure of self-government, and the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, Sir Benjamin Pine, had excited 
indignation among all friends of the natives by his 
arbitrary imprisonment, after a mock trial, of a 
Kaffir chief. Lord Carnarvon had carefully to 
consider this case, and also to decide whether the 
mixed Constitution of Natal, which would not 
work, should be reformed or annulled. A still more 
serious difficulty was connected with the Diamond 
Fields, officially known as Griqualand West. The 
ownership of this district had been disputed 
between the Orange Free State and a native 
chief called Nicholas Waterboer. In 1871 Lord 
Kimberley, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, 
had purchased it from Waterboer at a price 
ludicrously small in proportion to its value, and 
it had since been annexed to the British dominions 
by the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly. Waterboer, 
who knew nothing about the value of money, 
was satisfied. The Orange State vehemently 
protested, and President Brand denounced the 



SOUTH AFRICA 255 

annexation as a breach of faith. Not only, he 
said, were the Diamond Fields within the limits 
of his Republic ; the agreement between Water- 
boer and the Secretary of State was itself a breach 
of the Orange River Convention, by which Great 
Britain undertook not to negotiate with any 
native chief north of the River Vaal. Lord 
Kimberley paid no heed to Brand's remonstrances. 
He denied altogether the validity of the Dutch 
claim, and he would not hear of arbitration. By 
the time that Lord Carnarvon came into office 
thousands of British settlers were digging for 
diamonds in Griqualand West, and its abandon- 
ment was impossible. Brand himself did not wish 
to take the responsibility of governing it. But he 
continued to press the case for compensation, and 
the British Government, which had forced inde- 
pendence upon the Boers, appeared in the invidious 
light of shirking responsibility while grasping at 
mineral wealth. If it had not been for this 
untoward incident, the Dutch Republics would 
have been more favourable to Lord Carnarvon's 
policy than Cape Colony was. The Transvaal 
was imperfectly protected against the formidable 
power of the Zulus, and a general rising of blacks 
against whites was the real danger which 
threatened South Africa. 

That peril, however, was felt more acutely in 
Natal than in Cape Colony. The Cape had for 
two years enjoyed responsible government, and its 
first Prime Minister was John Charles Molteno. 



256 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Molteno was not in any other respect a remarkable 
man. He had come to the post by adroit manage- 
ment of a miscellaneous community, comprising 
British, Dutch, and Kaffirs. He was personally 
incorruptible, and he played the game according 
to the rules. He would have called himself, and 
so far as his opportunities admitted, he was, a 
constitutional statesman, justly proud of the 
position to which his own qualities had raised 
him, and extremely jealous of interference from 
Downing Street. He had no responsibility, as 
he was never tired of explaining, for the acquisition 
of the Diamond Fields, and he left the Colonial 
Office to settle that matter with President Brand. 
Local politics were his business. He did not 
look beyond the House of Assembly at Cape Town, 
which it was his duty to lead, and the Governor, 
Sir Henry Barkly, with whom he was on excellent 
terms. His own origin, which was partly English 
and partly Italian, made it easy for him to be 
impartial between the two white races in South 
Africa. For the Kaffirs he had no great tender- 
ness. They had votes, and if they chose to sell 
them for brandy that was their own affair. Of 
what would now be called Imperialism Molteno 
had no trace. He would support Federation when 
in his opinion it suited the interests of Cape Colony, : 
and not an hour before. 

Froude left Dartmouth in the Walmer Castle on 
the 23rd of August, 1874. He occupied himself 
during the voyage partly in discussing the affairs 



SOUTH AFRICA 257 

of the Cape with his fellow-passengers, and partly 
in reading Greek. The ''Leaves from a South 
African Journal," which close the third volume of 
Short Studies, describe his journey in his most 
agreeably colloquial style. A piece of literary 
criticism adorns the entry for September 4th. " I 
have been feeding hitherto on Greek plays : this 
morning I took Homer instead, and the change 
is from a hot-house to the open air. The Greek 
dramatists, even ^schylus himself, are burdened 
with a painful consciousness of the problems of 
human life, with perplexed theories of Fate and 
Providence. Homer is fresh, free, and salt as the 
ocean." 

No sooner had Froude landed at Cape Town 
than he began tracing all its evils to responsible 
government. The solidity of the houses reminded 
him that they were built under an absolute system. 
'* What is it which has sent our Colonies into so 
sudden a frenzy for what they call political 
liberty ? " A movement which has been in steady 
progress for thirty years can scarcely be called 
sudden, even though it be regarded as a frenzy, 
and so far back as 1776 there were British colonists 
beyond the seas who attached some practical 
value to freedom. A drive across the peninsula 
of Table Mountain suggested equally positive re- 
flections of another kind. '' Were England wise 
in her generation, 'a line of forts from Table Bay 
to False Bay would be the northern limit of her 
Imperial responsibilities." This had been the 
(3310) 17 



258 LIFE OF FROUDE 

cherished poHcy of Lord Grey at the Colonial 
Office, and the Whigs generally inclined to the 
same view. But it was already obsolete. Lord 
Kimberley had proceeded on exactly the opposite 
principle, and Lord Carnarvon's object in pushing 
Federation was certainly not to diminish the area 
of the British Empire. 

If Froude talked in South Africa as he wrote in 
his journal, his conversation must have been more 
interesting than discreet. '' Every one," he wrote 
from Port Elizabeth, on the 27th of September, 
1874, " approves of the action of the Natal Govern- 
ment in the Langalibalele affair. I am told that if 
Natal is irritated it may petition to relinquish 
the British connection, and to be allowed to join 
the Free States. I cannot but think that it would 
have been a wise policy, when the Free States 
were thrown off, to have attached Natal to them." 
Lord Carnarvon disapproved of the Natal Govern- 
ment's action, released Langalibalele, and recalled 
the Lieutenant-Governor. His policy was as wise 
as it was courageous, and no proposal to relinquish 
the British connection followed. Froude was a 
firm believer in the Dutch method of dealing 
with Kaffirs, and he had no more prejudice against 
slavery than Carlyle himself. But his sense of 
justice was offended by the treatment of Langali- 
balele, and if he had been Secretary of State he 
would have done as Lord Carnarvon did. With 
the Boers Froude had a good deal of sympathy. 
Their religion, a purer Calvinism than existed even 



SOUTH AFRICA 259 

in Scotland, appealed to his deepest sentiments, 
and he admired the austere simplicity of their 
lives. No one could accuse a Cape Dutchman 
of complicity in such horrors as progress and the 
march of intellect. On his way from Cape Town 
to Durban f^roude was told a characteristic 
story of a Dutch farmer. " His estate adjoined 
the Diamond Fields. Had he remained where he 
was, he could have made a large fortune. Milk, 
butter, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit, went up 
to fabulous prices. The market was his own to 
demand what he pleased. But he was disgusted 
at the intrusion upon his solitude. The diggers 
worried him from morning to night, demanding 
to buy, while he required his farm produce 
for his own family. He sold his land, in his 
impatience, for a tenth of what he might have got 
had he cared to wait and bargain, mounted his 
wife and children into his waggon, and moved off 
into the wilderness." Fronde's sarcastic com- 
ment' is not less characteristic than the stor}^ 
*' Which was the wisest man, the Dutch farmer 
or the Yankee who was laughing at him ? The 
only book that the Dutchman had ever read was 
the Bible, and he knew no better."^ 

The state of Natal, which was then perplexing 
the Colonial Office, puzzled Froude still more. 
Four courses seemed to him possible. Natal 
might be annexed to Cape Colony, made a pro- 
vince of a South African Federation, governed 

^ Short Studies, iii. 497. 



26o LIFE OF FROUDE 

despotically b}^ a soldier, or left to join the Dutch 
Republics. The fifth course, which was actually 
taken, of giving it responsible government by 
stages, did not come within the scope of his ideas. 
The difficulty of Federation lay, as it seemed to 
him, in the native problem. 

** If we can make up our minds to allow the 
colonists to manage the natives their own way, 
we may safely confederate the whole country. 
The Dutch will be in the majority, and the Dutch 
method of management will more or less prevail. 
They will be left wholly to themselves for self- 
defence, and prudence will prevent them from 
trying really harsh or aggressive measures. In 
other respects the Dutch are politically conserva- 
tive, and will give us little trouble." If, on the 
other hand, native policy was to be directed from 
home, or, in other words, if adequate precautions 
were to be taken against slavery, a federal system 
would be useless, and South Africa must be 
governed like an Indian province. 

Pretoria Froude found full of English, loudly 
demanding annexation. He told them, speaking 
of course only for himself, that it was impos- 
sible, because the Cape was a self-governing 
Colony, and the Dutch majority " would take 
any violence offered to their kinsmen in the 
Republics as an injury to themselves." To an- 
nexation without violence, by consent of the 
Boers, the great obstacle, so Froude found, was 
the seizure, the fraudulent seizure, as they thought 



SOUTH AFRICA 261 

it, of the Diamond Fields. He visited Kimberley, 
called after the Colonial Secretary who acquired 
it, " like a squalid Wimbledon Camp set down in 
an arid desert," The method of digging for 
diamonds was then primitive. 

"Each owner works by himself or with his own 
servants. He has his own wire rope, and his 
own basket, by which he sends his stuff to the 
surface to be washed. The rim of the pit is 
fringed with windlasses. The descending wire 
ropes stretch from them thick as gossamers on 
an autumn meadow. The system is as demoralis- 
ing as it is ruinous. The owner cannot be ubiquit- 
ous : if he is with his working cradle, his servants 
in the pit steal his most valuable stones and secrete 
them. Forty per cent, of the diamonds discovered 
are supposed to be lost in this way."^ The pro- 
portion of profit between employer and employed 
seems to have been fairer than usual, though 
it might, no doubt, have been more regularly 
arranged. 

At Bloemfontein Froude called on President 
Brand, '* a resolute, stubborn-looking man, with 
a frank, but not over-conciliatory, expression of 
face." Brand was in no conciliatory mood. He 
held that his country had been robbed of land 
which the British Government renounced in 1854, 
and only resumed iiow because diamonds had been 
discovered on it. The interview, however, was 
neither unimportant nor unsatisfactory. It was 

' Short Studies, vol. iii. p. 537. 



262 LIFE OF FROUDE 

followed by an invitation to dinner, and frank 
discussion of the whole subject. So firmly con- 
vinced was Froude of the President's good faith 
and of the injustice done him that he pleaded the 
cause of the Free State with the Colonial Office, 
and Lord Carnarvon settled the dispute in a 
friendly manner by the payment of a reasonable 
sum.^ But that was not till 1876, after Brand had 
visited London, and seen Lord Carnarvon himself. 
At the end of 1874 Froude returned to England, 
and reported to Lord Carnarvon what he had 
observed. The Colonial Secretary, just, but punc- 
tilious, was unwilling to reverse Lord Kimberley's 
policy, and Froude discovered that party politics, 
to which he traced all our woes, had much less 
to do with administration than he imagined. 
Under the influence of Bishop Colenso, an intrepid 
friend of the natives. Lord Carnarvon had already 
interfered on behalf of Langalibalele, but that 
only involved overruling the Government of 
Natal. After mature consideration he wrote a 
despatch to Sir Henry Barkly in which stress was 
laid upon the importance of arranging all differen- 
ences with the Orange State. Then he proceeded 
to the subject of Federation, which was always 
in his mind and at his heart. Here he unfortu- 
nately failed to make allowance for the sensitive 
pride of Colonial statesmen. He proposed the 
assemblage of a Federal Conference at Cape 
Town, at which Froude would represent the 

1 ;^0,000. 



SOUTH AFRICA 263 

Colonial Office. For Cape Colony he suggested 
the names of the Prime Minister, Molteno, and of 
Paterson, who led the Opposition. 

In June, 1875, Froude went back to South Africa, 
this time as an acknowledged emissary of the 
Government, but by ill luck his arrival coincided 
with the receipt of the despatch. The effect of 
this document was prodigious. Molteno considered 
that he had been personally insulted. The Legisla- 
tive Assembly was defiant, and greeted the recital 
of Carnarvon's words with ironical laughter. A 
Ministerial Minute, signed by Molteno and his 
colleagues, protested against the Colonial Secre- 
tary's intrusion, and especially against his rather 
ill advised reference to a proposed separation of 
the eastern from the western provinces of the 
Cape. It was a fact that Port Elizabeth and 
Grahamstown, where there were very few Dutch, 
considered that they paid proportionately too 
much towards the colonial revenues, and desired 
separate treatment. But the people of Cape 
Town strongly objected, and it was unwise for 
the Secretary of State to take a side in local 
politics. Froude found his position by no means 
agreeable. Molteno, though never discourteous, 
received him coldly, and objected to his making 
speeches. The Governor, who liked to be good 
friends with his Ministers, gave him no encourage- 
ment. The House of Assembly, after proposing 
to censure Carnarvon in their haste, censured 
Froude at their leisure. That did him no harm. 



264 LIFE OF FROUDE 

But he disliked the new position in which he 
found himself, and in his private journal he 
expressed his sentiments freely. 

He had not been long in Cape Town when he 
wrote, on the gth of July, 1875, to his eldest daughter 
a full and vivid account of the political situation. 
" I am glad," he said, " that no one is with me 
who cares for me. No really good thing can be 
carried out without disturbing various interests. 
The Governor and Parliament have set themselves 
against Lord Carnarvon. The whole country 
has declared itself enthusiastically for him. The 
consequence is that the opposition, who are 
mortified and enraged, now daily pour every sort 
of calumny on my unfortunate head. I don't 
read more of it than I can help, but some things 
I am forced to look at in order to answer; and 
the more successful my mission promises to be, 
the more violent and unscrupulous become those 
whose pockets are threatened by it. I wait in 
Cape Town till the next English steamer arrives, 
and then I mean to start for a short tour in the 
neighbourhood. I shall make my way by land 
to Mossel Bay, and then go on by sea to Port 
Elizabeth and Natal, where I shall wait for orders 
from home. Sir Garnet ^ has written me a very 
affectionate letter, inviting me to stay with him. 
Here the authorities begin to be more respectful 
than they were. Last night there was a State 
Dinner at Government House, when I took in 

1 The present Lord Wolseley. 



SOUTH AFRICA 265 

Lady Barkly. Miss Barkly would hardly speak 
to me. I don't wonder. She is devoted to her 
father ; I would do exactly the same in her place. 
I sent you a paper with an account of the dinner, 
and my speech, but you must not think that the 
dinner represented Cape Town society generally. 
Cape Town society, up to the reception at Govern- 
ment House, has regarded me as some portentous 
object come here to set the country on fire, and 
to be regarded with tremors by all respectable 
people. Outside Cape Town, on the contrary, in 
every town in the country, Dutch or English, I 
should be carried through the streets on the 
people's shoulders if I would only allow it, so 
you see I am in an ' unexampled situation.' ^ The 
Governor's dinner cards had on them * to meet 
Mr. Froude.' I am told that no less than eight 
people who were invited refused in mere terror 
of me. . . . Things are in a wild state here, and 
grow daily wilder. I am responsible for having 
lighted the straw ; and if Lord Carnarvon has been 
frightened at the first bad news, there will be 
danger of real disturbance- The despatch has 
created a real enthusiasm, and excited hopes 
which must not now be disappointed." " Never," 
he wrote a few weeks afterwards, *' never did a man 
of letters volunteer into a more extraordinary posi- 
tion than that in which I find myself." Sir Garnet 
Wolseley stood by him through thick and thin. 
After Sir Garnet's departure he had no English 

^ A favourite expression with Mrs. Carlyle, 



266 LIFE OF FROUDE 

friend. His local supporters were ''all looking 
out for themselves," and there was not one among 
them in whom he could feel any real confidence." 
Of Molteno he made no personal complaint, 
and he always considered him the fittest man 
for his post in South Africa. But Colonial 
politicians as a whole were " not gentlemen with 
whom it was agreeable to be forced into contact." 
To give the Colony responsible governm.ent had 
been " an act of deliberate insanity " on the 
part of Lord Kimberley and the Liberal Cabinet. 
Froude endeavoured loyally and faithfully to 
carry out the policy of the Colonial Office, 
and his relations with Lord Carnarvon were 
relations of unbroken confidence. His objects 
were purely unselfish and patriotic. It was his 
misfortune rather than his fault to become in- 
volved in local politics, from which it was essential 
for the success of his mission that he should keep 
entirely aloof. Circumstances brought him into 
much greater favour with the Dutch than with 
his own countrymen, for it was thought, not 
without reason, that he had brought Carnarvon 
round to see the truth about the Diamond Fields 
and the Free State. He made them speeches, 
and they received him with enthusiasm. With 
Molteno, on the other hand, he found it impossible 
to act, and the Governor supported Molteno. 
Barkly was not unfavourable to Federation. But 
he perceived that it could not be forced upon a 
self-governing Colony, and that he himself would 



SOUTH AFRICA 267 

be powerless unless he acted in harmony with his 
constitutional advisers. He, as well as Molteno, 
refused to attend the dinner at which Froude on 
his arrival was entertained in Cape Town. Molteno 
advised Froude not to go, or if he went, not to 
speak. Froude, however, both went and spoke, 
claiming as an Englishman the right of free speech 
in a British Colony. The right was of course 
incontestable. The expediency was a very differ- 
ent matter. Froude was not accustomed to 
public speaking, and only long experience can 
teach that most difficult part of the process, 
the instinctive avoidance of what should not be 
said. His brilliant lectures were all read from 
manuscript, and he had never been in the habit 
of thinking on his legs. In 1874 he could at least 
say that he spoke only for himself. In 1875 he 
committed the Colonial Office, and even the 
Cabinet, to his own personal opinions, which were 
not in favour of Parliamentary Government as 
understood either by Englishmen or by Afri- 
canders. He was accused of getting up a popular 
agitation on behalf of the Imperial authorities 
against the Governor of the Colony, his Ministers, 
and the Legislative Assembly of the Cape. He 
did in fact, under a strong sense of duty, urge 
Carnarvon to recall Barkly, and to substitute for 
him Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had temporarily 
taken over the administration of Natal. 

Sir Garnet, however, had no such ambition. 
Soldiering was the business of his life, and he had 



368 LIFE OF FROUDE 

had quite enough of constitutionaHsm in Natal. 
Barkly was for the present maintained, and 
Froude regarded his maintenance as fatal to 
Federation. But Sir Bartle Frere, who suc- 
ceeded him, was not more fortunate, and the real 
mistake was interference from home. To Froude 
his experience of South Africa came as a dis- 
agreeable shock. A passionate believer in Greater 
Britain, in the expansion of England, in the 
energy, resources, and prospects of the Queen's 
dominions beyond the seas, the parochialism of 
Cape Colony astonished and perplexed him. While 
he was dreaming of a Federated Empire, Molteno 
and Paterson were counting heads in the Cape 
Assembly, and considering what would be the 
pohtical result if the eastern provinces set up for 
themselves. If South Africa were federated, 
would Cape Town remain the seat of government ? 
To Froude such a question was paltry and trivial. 
To a Cape Town shopkeeper it loomed as large 
as Table Mountain. The attitude of Molteno' s 
Ministry, on the other hand, seemed as ominous 
to him as it seemed obvious to the Colonists. 
He thought it fatal to the unity of the Empire, 
and amounting to absolute independence. He 
did not understand the people with whom he had 
to deal. Most of them were as loyal subjects 
as himself, and never contemplated for a moment 
secession from the Empire. All they claimed 
was complete freedom to manage their own affairs, 
to federate or not to federate, as they pleased 



SOUTH AFRICA 269 

and v/hen they pleased. They had only just 
acquired full constitutional rights; and if they 
sometimes exaggerated the effect of them, the error 
was venial. If Carnarvon, instead of writing for 
publication an elaborate and official despatch, 
had explained his policy to the Governor in private 
letters, and directed him to sound Molteno in 
confidence, the Cape Ministers might themselves 
have proposed a scheme ; and if they had proposed 
it, it would have been carried. Had Froude said 
nothing at dinners, or on platforms, he might 
have exercised far more influence behind the 
scenes. But he was an enthusiast for Federation 
by means of a South African Conference, and he 
made a proselytising tour through the Colony. 
The Dutch welcomed him because he acknow- 
ledged their rights. At Grahamstown too, and 
at Port Elizabeth, he was hailed as the champion 
of separation for the eastern provinces. The 
Legislative Assembly at Cape Town, however, was 
hostile, and the proposed conference fell through. 
Lord Carnarvon did not see the full significance 
of the fact that the Confederation of Canada had 
been first mooted within the Dominion itself. 

An interesting account of Froude at this time 
has been given by Sir George Colley, the brilliant 
and accomplished soldier whose career was cut 
short six years afterwards at Majuba : 

"I came home from the Cape, and almost Uved 
on the way with Mr. Froude. ... It was rather 
a sad mind, sometimes grand, sometimes pathetic 



270 LIFE OF FROUDE 

and tender, usually cynical, but often relating with 
the highest appreciation, and with wonderful 
beauty of language, some gallant deed of some of 
his heroes of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. 
He seemed to have gone through every phase of 
thought, and come to the end * All is vanity.' 
He himself used to say the interest of life to a 
thinking man was exhausted at thirty, or thirty- 
five. After that there remained nothing but 
disappointment of earlier visions and hopes. 
Sometimes there was something almost fearful 
in the gloom, and utter disbelief, and defiance of 
his mind." ^ 

The picture is a sombre one. But it must be 
remembered that the death of his wife was still 
weighing heavily upon Froude. 

A few days after his return to London Froude 
wrote a long and interesting Report to the Secre- 
tary of State, which was laid before Parliament 
in due course. Few documents more thoroughly 
unofficial have ever appeared in a Blue Book. 
The excellence of the paper as a literary essay 
is conspicuous. But its chief value lies in the 
impression produced by South African pohtics 
upon a penetrating and observant mind trained 
under wholly different conditions. Froude would 
not have been a true disciple of Carlyle if he had 
felt or expressed much sympathy with the native 
race. He wanted them to be comfortable. For 
freedom he did not consider them fit. It was the 

^ Butler's Life of Colley, p. 145. 



SOUTH AFRICA 271 

Boers who really attracted him, and the man he 
admired the most in South Africa was President 
Brand. The sketch of the two Dutch Republics 
in his Report is drawn with a very friendly hand. 
He thought, not without reason, that they had 
been badly tieated. Their independence, which 
they did not then desire, had been forced 
upon them by Lord Grey and the Duke of New- 
castle. The Sand River Convention of 1852, and 
the Orange River Convention of 1854, resulted 
from British desire to avoid future responsibility 
outside Cape Colony and Natal. As for the Dutch 
treatment of the Kaffirs, it had never in Froude's 
opinion been half so bad as Pine's treatment of 
Langalibalele. By the second article of the 
Orange River Convention, renewed and ratified 
at Aliwal after the Basuto war in 1869, Her 
Majesty's Government promised not to make 
any agreement with native chiefs north of the 
Vaal River. Yet, when diamonds were discovered 
north of the Vaal in Griqualand West, the territory 
was purchased by Lord Kimberley from Nicholas 
Waterboer, without the consent, and notwith- 
standing the protests, of the Orange Free State. 
But although Lord Kimberley assented to the 
annexation of Griqualand West in 1871, he only 
did so on the distinct understanding that Cape 
Colony would undertake to administer the Diamond 
Fields, and this thfe Cape Ministers refused to do, 
lest they should offend their Dutch constituents. 
It was not till 1878, when all differences with 



272 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the Free State had been settled, and the Transvaal 
was a British possession, that Griqualand West 
became an integral part of Cape Colony. In 
January, 1876, Brand was still asking for arbitra- 
tion, and Carnarvon was still refusing it. 

When he explained the Colonial Secretary's 
policy to the Colonial Secretary himself Froude 
came very near explaining it away. The Con- 
ference, he said, was only intended to deal with the 
native question and the question of Griqualand. 
Was Confederation then a dream ? Froude himself, 
in a private letter to Molteno, dated April 29th, 
1875, wrote, " Lord Carnarvon's earnest desire 
since he came into ofhce has been if possible to 
form South Africa into a confederate dominion, 
with complete internal self-government." ^ That 
was the whole object of the Conference, which 
but for that would never have been proposed. 
That, as Froude truly says in his Report, was 
one of Molteno' s reasons for resisting it. The 
Cape Premier thought that South Africa was 
not ripe for Confederation. If Froude had had 
more practice in drawing up official documents, 
he would probably have left out this depreca- 
tory argument, which does not agree with the 
rest of his case. He attributes, for instance, 
to local politicians a dread that the supremacy 
of Cape Town would be endangered. But no 
possible treatment of the natives, or of Griqualand 
West, would have endangered the supremacy of 

^ Life of Molteno, vol. i. p. S37- 



SOUTH AFRICA 273 

Cape Town. The Confederation of which Froude 
and Carnarvon were champions would have 
avoided tremendous calamities if it could have 
been carried out. The chief difficulties in its 
way were Colonial jealousy of interference from 
Downing Street and Dutch exasperation at the 
seizure of the Diamond Fields. " You have 
trampled on those poor States^ sir," said a member 
of the Cape Legislature to Froude, " till the country 
cries shame upon you, and you come now to us 
to assist you in your tyranny ; we will not do it, 
sir. We are astonished that you should dare to 
ask us." Such language was singularly inappro- 
priate to Froude himself, for the Boers never had 
a warmer advocate than they had in him. But 
the circumstances in which Griqualand West were 
annexed will excuse a good deal of strong language. 
At Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown Froude was 
welcomed as an advocate of their local indepen- 
dence, which was what they most desired. When, 
with unusual prudence, he declined to take part 
in a separatist campaign, their zeal for Confedera- 
tion soon cooled. On the other hand, the Dutch 
papers all supported the Conference, although 
Brand refused to lay his case before it, or to treat 
with any authority except the British Government 
at home. 

Neither Froude nor Carnarvon made sufficient 
allowance for Colonial independence and the suscep- 
tibilities of Colonial Ministers. Many of Fronde's 
expressions in public were imprudent, and he 

(2310) 18 



274 LIFE OF FROUDE 

himself in his Report apologised for his unguarded 
language at Grahamstown, where he said that 
Molteno's reply to Carnarvon's despatch would have 
meant war if it had come from a foreign state. 
Yet in the main their policy was a wise one, and 
they saw farther ahead than the men who worked 
the political machine at Cape Town. Froude was 
too sanguine when he wrote, " A Confederate 
South African Dominion, embracing all the States, 
both English and Dutch, under a common flag, 
may be expected as likely to follow, and perhaps 
at no very distant period." But he added that 
it would have to come by the deliberate action 
of the South African communities themselves. 
That was not the only discovery he had made in 
South Africa. He had found that the Transvaal, 
reputed then and long afterwards in England to 
be worthless, was rich in minerals, including gold. 
He warned the Colonial Office that Cetewayo, 
with forty thousand armed men, was a serious 
danger to Natal. He saw clearly, and said plainly, 
that unless South Africa was to be despotically 
governed, it must be administered with the consent 
and approval of the Dutch. He dwelt strongly 
upon the danger of allowing and encouraging 
natives to procure arms in Griqualand West as 
an enticement to work for the diamond mine 
owners. The secret designs of Sir Theophilus 
Shepstone he did not penetrate, and therefore 
he was unprepared for the next development 
in the South African drama. The South African 



SOUTH AFRICA 275 

Conference in London, which he attended during 
August, 1876, led to no useful result because 
Molteno, though he had come to London, and 
was discussing the affairs of Griqualand with 
Lord Carnarvon, refused to attend it. This 
was the end otf South African Confederation, and 
the permissive Act of 1877, passed after the 
Transvaal had been annexed, remained a dead 
letter on the Statute Book. 

Although the immediate purpose of Froude's 
visits to South Africa was not attained, it would 
be a mistake to infer that they had no results at 
all. Early in 1877 the annexation of the Transvaal, 
to which Froude was strongly opposed, changed 
the whole aspect of affairs, and from that time the 
strongest opponents of Federalism were the Dutch. 
But the credit of settling with the Orange Free 
State a dispute which might have led to infinite 
mischief is as much Froude's as Carnarvon's, and 
as a consequence of their wise conduct President 
Brand became for the rest of his life a steady 
friend to the British power in South Africa. 
Ninety thousand pounds was a small price to pay 
for the double achievement of reconciling a model 
State and wiping out a stain upon England's 
honour. 

More than four years after his second return 
from South Africa, in January, 1880, Froude 
delivered two lectures to the Philosophical Society 
of Edinburgh, in which his view of South African 
policy is with perfect clearness set forth. He 



276 LIFE OF FROUDE 

condemns the annexation of the Transvaal, and 
the Zulu war. He expresses a wish that Lord 
Carnarvon, who had resigned two years before, 
could be permanent Secretary for the Colonies. 
** I would give back the Transvaal to the Dutch," 
he said. Again, in even more emphatic language, 
" The Transvaal, in spite of prejudices about the 
British flag, I still hope that we shall return to its 
lawful owners." ^ What is more surprising, he 
recommended that Zululand should be restored to 
Cetewayo, or Cetewayo to Zululand. He had 
predicted in 1875 that Cetewayo would prove a 
troublesome person, and few men had less of the 
sentiment which used to be associated with Exeter 
Hall. The restoration of Cetewayo, when it came, 
was disastrous both to himself and to others. 
Frere understood the Zulus better than Froude or 
Colenso. The surrender of the Transvaal, which 
was a good deal nearer than Froude thought, 
was at least successful for a time, a longer time 
than Froude' s own life. He did not share Glad- 
stone's ignorance of its value; he knew it to be 
rich in minerals, especially in gold. But he knew 
also that Carnarvon had been deceived about the 
willingness of the inhabitants to become British 
subjects, and he sympathised with their Puritan 
independence. It illustrates his own fairness and 
detachment of mind that he should have taken so 
strong and so unpopular a line when the Boers 
were generally supposed in England to have 

' Two Lectures on South Africa, pp. 80, 81, 85, 



SOUTH AFRICA 277 

acquiesced in the loss of their Hberties, and when 
his hero Sir Garnet Wolseley, to whom he dedi- 
cated his English in Ireland, had declared that 
the Vaal would run back to the Drakensberg 
before the British flag ceased to wave over 
Pretoria. 

Froude's South African policy was to work 
with the Dutch, and keep the natives in their 
places. He had no personal interest in the 
question. It was through Lord Carnarvon that 
he came in contact with South Africa at all, and 
there were few statesmen with whom he more 
thoroughly agreed. When Disraeli came for the 
second time into office, and for the first time into 
power, Froude was well pleased. 

In 1875, after his legal disqualification had been 
removed, he was again invited to become a candi- 
date for Parliament. But he did not really know 
to which party he belonged. 

" Four weeks ago," he wrote to Lady Derby on 
the 3rd of April, " the Liberal Whip (Mr. Adam) 
asked me to stand for the Glasgow and Aberdeen 
Universities on very easy terms to myself. I 
declined, because I should have had to commit 
myself to the Liberal party, which I did not choose 
to do. Lord Carnarvon afterwards spoke to me 
with regret at my resolution. He had a conversa- 
tion with Mr. DTsraeli, and it was agreed that if 
possible I should be brought in by a compromise 
without a contest. But it appeared doubtful 
afterwards whether the Liberals would consent to 



278 LIFE OF FROUDE 

this without fuller pledges than I could consent to 
give. I was asked if I would stand anyhow 
(contest or not), or whether I would allow myself 
to be nominated in their interest for any other 
place when a vacancy should occur. I said, No. 
(I would stand a contest on the Conservative side, 
if on any.) I was neither Conservative nor Liberal 
per se, but would not oppose Mr. D' Israeli. So 
there this matter lies, unless your people have as 
good an opinion of me as the others, and want a 
candidate of my lax description. But indeed I 
have no wish to go into Parliament. I am too 
old to begin a Parliamentary life, and infinitely 
prefer making myself of use to the Conservative 
side in some other way. ... I am at Lord Car- 
narvon's service if he wishes me to go on with 
his Colonial affairs. I came home from the Cape 
to be of use to him." 

The Colonial policy of the Liberals Froude 
had always regarded with suspicion. Even Lord 
Kimberley's grant of a constitution to the Cape 
he interpreted as showing a centrifugal tendency, 
and Car dwell' s withdrawal of troops from Canada 
was all of a piece. Disraeli, on the other hand, 
who never did anything for the Colonies, had 
been making a speech about them at Manchester, 
wherein all manner of Colonial possibilities were 
suggested. They did not go, if they were ever 
intended to go, beyond suggestion, and in 1876 
the sudden crisis in Eastern affairs superseded 
all other topics of political interest. 



SOUTH AFRICA 279 

When the Eastern Question was first raised, 
Froude had taken the side of the Government. 

" I like Lord Derby's speech," he wrote to Lady 
Derby on the 19th of September, 1876, " to the 
Working Men' s Association . So I think the country 
will when it recovers from its present intoxication. 
Violent passions which rise suddenly generally 
sink as fast if there is no real reason for them. It 
is impossible that the people can fail to recollect 
in a little while that the reticence of which they 
complain is under the circumstances inevitable. 

** Gladstone and his satellites are using their 
opportunities, however, with thorough unscrupu- 
lousness. It is possible that they may force an 
Autumn Session, and even force the Ministry to 
resign — but woe to themselves if they do. They 
will promise what cannot be carried out, and will 
perhaps, in fine retribution for the Crimean War, 
bring the Russians to Constantinople. It will 
not be a bad thing in itself, but there will be 
an end of the English Minister who brings it 
about." 

Again, three days later, to the same corre- 
spondent : 

" I admire the Premier's speech. It is what I 
expected of him. The Liberal leaders are behaving 
scandalously, with the exception perhaps of Lord 
Hartington. The Cabinet I trust will now decide 
on an Autumn Session to remove so critical a 
matter out of the hands of irresponsible mobs. I 
was surprised to hear the war in Servia attributed 



28o LIFE OF FROUDE 

to the secret societies. Cluseret I know has in- 
tended to ask for service with Turkey, with a view 
to a war, against Russia, and has been withheld 
only by some differences with General Klapha, 
the Turco-Hungarian, from doing so. I had a 
long letter from him to-day, in which he expresses 
his restlessness characteristically, J'ai la nostalgic 
de la foudre." 

Afterwards Froude followed Carlyle, and went 
with Russia against Turkey. The '' unspeakable 
Turk " was to be " struck out of the question," 
and Bismarck invited to arbitrate. Such was 
the oracular deliverance from Cheyne Row, and 
Froude obeyed the oracle. He attended the 
Conference at St. James's Hall in December, 
at which Gladstone spoke, and Carlyle' s letter 
was read, sitting for the only time in his life 
on the same platform with Freeman. Next 
May, when war between Russia and Turkey had 
actually begun, when Gladstone was about to move 
his famous resolutions in the House of Commons, 
there appeared in The Times ^ another remarkable 
letter from the same hand. This time, however, 
it was no mere question of style, though ** our 
miraculous Premier " was a phrase which stuck. 
Carlyle evidently had information of some design 
for giving Turkey the support of the British 
fleet in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, 
and was not very discreet in the use he made of 
it. The Cabinet were supposed to be divided 

» May 5, 1877. 



SOUTH AFRICA 281 

on the question of helping Turkey by material 
means, which of course meant war with Russia, 
and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, was 
known to be in favour of peace. A year later 
Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby had both left 
the Cabinet ^rather than be responsible for a 
vote of credit which meant preparation for war, 
and for calling out the Reserves. 

Froude was in complete sympathy with the 
retiring ministers, and he regarded it as a pro- 
found mistake for England to quarrel with Russia 
on behalf of a Power which had no business in 
Europe at all. From his point of view the 
presence at the Colonial Office of so sympathetic 
a Minister as Carnarvon was far more important 
than the difference between the Treaty of San 
Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin. Of the Afghan 
War in 1878 he strongly disapproved. 

The following extracts from letters to Lady 
Derby show the phases of thought on the Eastern 
Question through which Froude passed, and are 
interesting also because they represent him in an 
unfamiliar light as the champion of Parliamentary 
Government against the secret diplomacy of Lord 
Beaconsfield. Arbitrary rule might be very 
good for Irishmen. As applied to Englishmen 
Froude disliked it no less than Gladstone or 
Bright. 

" February i6tH, 1877. — ^The Opposition have no 
hope of making a successful attack on the present 
Parliament — but they are resolute. They know 



282 LIFE OF FROUDE 

their own minds, and Gladstone (I know) has said 
that he has but to hold up his finger to force a 
dissolution and return as Prime Minister. I too 
think you are deceived by the London Press. 
Another massacre and all would be over. The 
Golden Bridge you speak of I conclude is for 
Russia; but if it was possible for the Cabinet, 
without changing its attitude, to make such a 
bridge, there would be no need of one. England 
has been, and I fear still is, the one obstacle to 
measures which would have long ago brought the 
Turk to his senses. I cannot but feel assured 
that you have thrown away an opportunity for 
securing to the Conservative party the gratitude 
of Europe and the possession of office for a genera- 
tion. If more mischief happens in Turkey it will 
be on you that public displeasure will fall, and 
you may need a bridge for yourselves and not 
find one. I croak like a raven. Perhaps you 
may set it down to an almost totally sleepless 
night." 

" April ^oth, 1877. — You destroy the last hope 
to which I had clung, that Lord Derby, though 
opposed to Russian policy, would not consent to 
go to war with her. I remain of my old opinion 
that England (foolishly excited as it always is 
when fighting is going on) will in the long run 
resent the absurdity and punish the criminality of 
taking arms in a worthless cause. I am sick of 
heart at the thought of what is coming, here as well 
as on the Continent. I have begged Carlyle to 



SOUTH AFRICA 283 

write a last appeal to The Times. We must agitate 
in the great towns, we must protest against what 
we may be unable to prevent. The Crimean War 
was innocent compared to what is now threatened, 
yet three years ago there was scarcely a person in 
England who did not admit that it was a mistake. 
I do not know what may be the verdict of the 
public about a repetition of it at the present 
moment. I know but too well what will be the 
verdict five years hence, and the fate which will 
overtake those who, with however good a motive, 
are courting the ruin of their party." 

" December 22nd, 1877. — The passion for inter- 
ference in defence of the Turks seems limited (as 
I was always convinced that it was) to the idle 
educated classes. The public meetings which have 
been, or are to be, go the other way, or at least are 
against our taking a part on the Turkish side. 
The demonstrations which Lord B. expected 
to follow on the first Russian success have not 
followed. The Telegraph and Morning Post have 
used their whips on the dead Crimean horse, but 
it will not stir for them. It will not stir even for 
the third volume of the Prince Consort's Life. But 
I am very sorry about it all, for the damage to 
the Conservative party from the lost opportunity 
of playing a great and honourable part is, I fear, 
irretrievable." 

" December 2yth, 1877. — The accounts from 
Bulgaria and Armenia turn me sick. These sheep, 
what have they done ? Diplomatists quarrel, and 



284 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the people suffer. The management of human 
affairs will be much improved when the people 
tell their respective Cabinets that if there is 
fighting to be done the Cabinets must fight them- 
selves, and that the result shall be accepted as 
final. Nine out of ten great wars might have 
been settled that way with equal advantage so far 
as the consequences were concerned, and to the 
infinite relief of poor humanity." 

''March 10th, 1878.— I met Lord D. at the 
club the other night. He looked as Prometheus 
might have looked when he was ' Unbound.' He 
was in excellent spirits and talked brilliantly. 
Not one allusion to the East, but I guessed that 
he had a mind at ease." 

" April Sth, 1878. — I wish I knew whether the 
Cabinet has determined on forcing war upon 
Russia at all events, or if Russia consents to go 
into the Conference on the English terms ; the 
Cabinet will then bona fide endeavour after an 
equitable and honourable settlement. Lord B.'s 
antecedents all point to a determination to make 
any settlement impossible. He has succeeded so 
far without provoking the other Powers, but such 
a game is surely dangerous, backed though he be 
by every fool and knave in England." 

" July i^th, 1878. — I gather that the Opposition 
is too disorganised to resist ; and if Parliament 
endure to be set aside, and allow the destinies 
of their country to be affected so enormously by 
the sole action of the Crown and the Cabinet, a 



SOUTH AFRICA 285 

change is passing over us the results of which it 
is impossible to estimate. We do, in fact, take 
charge of the Turkish Empire as completely as we 
took the Empire of the Moguls. In a little while 
we shall have to administer on the Continent as 
well as in Cypfus, and then will arise a new Asiatic 
army. This will bring wars with it before long, 
and a proportionate increase of the power of the 
Executive Government. If Parliament abdicates 
its authority now, what may we not anticipate ? 
I have long felt that the House of Commons could 
not long continue to govern the great concerns of 
the British Empire as it has done. I certainly 
did not expect that it would yield without a struggle 
— nor will it. Sooner or later we shall see a fight 
against the tendency which is giving so startling 
an evidence of its existence — and what is to 
happen then ? " 

" July 21st, 1878. — Lord Derby's speech was as 
good as it could possibly be. What he says now 
all the world will say two years hence. How 
deeply it cut appeared plainly enough in the 
scenes which followed. It must be peculiarly 
distressing to you — distressing in many ways, for 
I feel as certain as ever that the end of it all will 
be irreparable damage to the Conservative party. 
One would like to know Prince Bismarck's private 
opinion of the Premier and private opinion also 
of the nation which has taken him for their chosen 
leader. Of course he will dissolve while the 
glamour is fresh, and before the effects of the bad 



286 LIFE OF FROUDE 

champagne with which he has dosed the country 
begin to appear — first headache and penitence, 
and then exasperation at the provider of the 
entertainment." 

" November 24th, 1878. — The evil shadow of the 
Premier extends over the most innocent of our 
pleasures. I had been looking forward to a few 
days at Knowsley as the most enjoyable which I 
should have had during the whole year. Yet I 
knew how it would be. Daring as he is, he could 
not venture on an entire defiance of public opinion. 
Parliament of course would have to meet, and 
equally of course you and Lord D. would have 
to come up. I conclude the object to be to get 
up a Russian war after all. The stress laid by 
Lord Cranbrook on the reception of the Russian 
Embassy as the point of the injury will make it 
very difficult for the Russians to be neutral. If 
this is what the Ministry really intend, they may 
have their majority in Parliament docile, but I 
doubt whether they will have the country with 
them. I am sure they will not if Hartington and 
Granville support Lord Lawrence. 

" I interpret it all as meaning that the Premier 
knows that his policy has thoroughly broken down 
in Europe, and at all risks he means to have 
another try in the East." 

It was Froude's opinion, right or wrong, that 
Lord Beaconsfield might have settled the Irish 
question if he had left the Eastern question 



SOUTH AFRICA 287 

alone. Ke understood it, as some of his early 
speeches show, and he might have " established 
a just Land Court with the support of all the 
best land-owners in Ireland." ^ Why the Land 
Court established by Gladstone in 18 81 was unjust 
Froude did nat explain. Some of the best land- 
lords, if not all, supported it, and it relieved an 
intolerable situation. 

^ Table Talk of Shirley, p. i8o. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROUDE AND CARLYLE 

WHEN James Spedding introduced Froude to 
Carlyle he made unconsciously an epoch 
in Enghsh Hterature. For though Froude was 
incapable of merging himself in another man, as 
Spedding merged himself in Bacon, he did more 
for the author of Sartor Resartus than Spedding 
did for the author of the Novum Organum. Sped- 
ding's Bacon is an impossible hero of unhistorical 
perfection. Froude' s Carlyle, like Boswell's John- 
son, is a great man painted as he was. When 
the original head master of Uppingham described 
his school as Eton without its faults, there were 
those who felt for the first time that there was 
something to be said for the faults of Eton. 
Carlyle without his paradoxes and prejudices, 
his impetuous temper and his unbridled tongue, 
would be only half himself. If he were known 
only through his books, the world would have 
missed acquaintance with letters of singular 
beauty, and with the most humourous talker of 
his age. He was one of two men, Newman being 
the other, whose influence Froude felt through 
life, and the influence of Newman was chiefly 

288 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 289 

upon his style. Of Newman indeed he saw very 
little after he left Oxford, though his admiration 
and reverence for him never abated. It was not 
until he came to live in London after the death 
of his first wife that he grew really intimate with 
Carlyle. Up to that time he was no more than an 
occasional visitor in Cheyne Row with a profound 
belief in the philosophy of that incomparable 
poem in prose, The French Revolution. Carlyle 
helped him with his own history, the earlier 
volumes of which show clear traces of the master, 
and encouraged him in his literary work. 

Mrs. Carlyle was scarcely less remarkable than 
her husband. Although she never wrote a line 
for publication, her private letters are among the 
best in the language, and all who knew her agree 
that she talked as well as she wrote. Froude 
thought her the most brilliant and interesting 
woman he had ever met. The attraction was 
purely intellectual. Mrs. Carlyle was no longer 
young, and Froude's temperament was not in- 
flammable. But she liked clever men, and clever 
men liked her. She was an unhappy woman, 
without children, without religion, without any 
regular occupation except keeping house. Her 
husband she regarded as the greatest genius of 
his time, and his affection for her was the deepest 
feeling of his heart. He was at bottom a sincerely 
kind man, and his servants were devoted to him. 
But he was troublesome in small matters ; irritable, 
nervous, and dyspeptic. His books harassed him 

(2310) ig 



290 LIFE OF FROUDE 

like illnesses, and he groaned under the infliction. 
If he were disturbed when he was working, he 
lost all self-control, and his wife felt, she said, 
as if she were keeping a private mad-house. It 
was not quite so private as it might have been, 
for Mrs. Carlyle found in her grievances abun- 
dant food for her sarcastic tongue. Whatever 
she talked about she made interesting, and her 
relations with her husband became a common 
subject of gossip. It was said that the marriage 
had never been a real one, that they were only 
companions, and so forth. Froude was quite 
content to enjoy the society of the most gifted 
couple in London without troubing himself to 
solve mysteries which did not concern him. 

Thrifty as she was, Mrs. Carlyle was not fitted 
by physical strength and early training to be the 
wife of a poor man. She was too anxious a 
housekeeper, and worried herself nervously about 
trifles. Her father had been a country doctor, 
not rich, but able to keep the necessary servants. 
In Carlyle' s home there were no servants at all. 
His father was a mason, and the work of the 
house was done by the family. Why should his 
wife be in a different position from his mother's ? 
There was no reason, in the nature of things. But 
custom is very strong, and the early years of 
Mrs. Carlyle' s married life were a hard struggle 
against grinding poverty. Carlyle was grandly 
indifferent to material things. He wanted no 
luxuries, except tobacco and a horse. He would 
not have altered his message to mankind, or his 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 291 

mode of delivering it, for the wealth of the Indies. 
What he had to say he said, and men might take 
it or leave it as they thought proper. He never 
swerved from the path of integrity. He did not 
know his way to the house of Rimmon. The 
mere practiqal ability required to produce such 
a book as Frederick the Great might have 
realised a fortune in business. Carlyle just made 
enough money to live in decent and wholesome 
comfort. 

From the first Carlyle's conversation attracted 
Froude, and dazzled him. But he felt, as others 
felt, that submission rather than intimacy was 
the attitude which it suggested or compelled. 
There was no republic of letters in Carlyle's house. 
It was a dictatorship, pure and simple. What 
the dictator condemned was heresy. What he 
did not know was not knowledge. Mill was a 
poor feckless driveller. Darwin was a pretentious 
sciolist. Newman had the intellect of a rabbit. 
Herbert Spencer was " the most unending ass in 
Christendom." " Scribbling Sands and Eliots " 
were unfit to tie Mrs. Carlyle's shoe-strings. 
Editing Keats was " currying dead dog." Ruskin 
could only point out the correggiosity of Correggio. 
PoHtical economy was the dismal science, or 
the gospel according to McCrowdie.^ Carlyle's 
eloquent and humourous diatribes were wonderful, 
laughter-moving, • awe-compelling. They did not 
put his hearers at their ease, and Froude felt 
more admiration than sympathy. 

^ McCuUoch, the editor of Adam Smith, was meant. 



292 [j LIFE OF FROUDE 

P~In 1861, when Froude had been settled in 
London about a year, he received a visit from 
the great author himself. Carlyle did not take to 
many people, but he took to Froude. Perhaps 
he was touched by the younger man's devotion. 
Perhaps he saw that Froude was no ordinary 
disciple, and would be able to carry on the torch 
when he relinquished it himself. At all events 
he expressed a wish to see him oftener in his 
walks, in his rides, in his home. Nothing could 
be more flattering than such an invitation from 
such a man. Froude responded cordially, and 
became an habitual visitor. Like all really good 
talkers, Carlyle was at his best with a single 
companion, and there could be no more sympa- 
thetic companion than Froude. But there was 
another object of interest at Cheyne Row, and 
Froude felt for Mrs. Carlyle sincere compassion. 
She was often left to herself while her husband 
wrote upstairs, and she suffered tortures from 
neuralgia. It seemed to Froude that Carlyle, 
who never had a day's serious illness, felt more 
for his own dyspepsia and hypochondria than 
for his wife's far graver ailments. In this he 
was very likely unjust, for Carlyle was tenderly 
attached to his " Jeanie," and would have done 
anything for her if he had thought of it. But he 
was absorbed in Friederichj whose battles he would 
fight over again with the tired invalid on the 
sofa. Mf woman be the name of frailty, the name 
of vanity is man. ■- Carlyle was fond of his wife, 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 293 

but he was thinking of himself. His "Niagaras 
of scorn and vituperation " were a vent for his 
own feeHngs, a sort of moral gout. The apostle 
of silence recked not his own rede, nor did he think 
of the impression which his purely destructive 
preaching might make upon other people. He 
himself found in the eternities and immensities 
some kind of substitute for the Calvinistic Presby- 
terianism of his childhood. To her it was idle 
rhetoric and verbiage. He had taken away her 
dogmatic beliefs, and had nothing to put in their 
place. Her ''pale, drawn, suffering face" haunted 
Froude in his dreams. In 1862 Mrs. Carlyle's 
health broke down, and for a year her case 
seemed desperate. Her doctor sent her away to 
St. Leonard's, and in no long time she apparently 
recovered. After that her husband took more care 
of her, and provided her with a carriage. But 
her constitution had been shattered, and she died 
suddenly as she drove through Hyde Park on 
the 2 1st of April, 1866, while Carlyle was at 
Dumfries, resting after the delivery of his 
Rectorial Address to the University of Edinburgh. 
Carlyle's bereavement drove him into more 
complete dependence upon Froude' s sympathy 
and support. The lonely old man brooded over 
his loss, and over his own short-comings. He shut 
himself up in the house to read his wife's diaries 
and papers. He found that without meaning it 
he had often made her miserable. In her journal 
for the 2ist of June, 1856, he read, " The chief 



294 LIFE OF FROUDE 

interest of to-day expressed in blue marks on my 
wrists ! " ^ He realised that he had almost driven 
her to suicide, he the great preacher of duty and 
self-abnegation. "For the next few years," says 
Froude, ** I never walked with him without his 
recurring to a subject which was never absent 
from his mind." Doubtless his remorse was 
exaggerated. His letters, and his wife's, show 
that he was a most affectionate husband when 
nothing had occurred to deprive him of his self- 
command. But he had at times been cruelly 
inconsiderate, and he wished to do penance for 
his misdeeds. A practical Christian would have 
asked God to pardon him, and made amends by 
active kindness to his surviving fellow-creatures. 
Carlyle took another course. In 1871, five years 
after his wife's death, he suddenly brought Froude 
a large bundle of papers, containing a memoir 
of Mrs. Carlyle by himself, a number of her 
letters, and some other biographical fragments. 
Froude was to read them, to keep them, and 
to publish them or not, as he pleased, after 
Carlyle was dead.^ 

^ This passage was suppressed by Froude when he published 
Mrs. Carlyle's Diary and Letters. But he kept the copy made 
by Carlyle's niece under his superintendence, which still exists ; 
and as an incorrect version has appeared since his death, I give 
the correct one now. 

^ " I long much, with a tremulous, deep, and almost painful 
feeling, about that other Manuscript which you were kind enough 
to read at the very first. Be prepared to tell me, with all your 
candour, the pros and contvas there." — Carlyle to Froude, 26th 
of September, 1871. From The Hill, Dumfries. 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 295 

Well would it have been for Froude's peace of 
mind if he had handed the parcel back again, and 
refused to look at it. The tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil scarcely yielded more fatal fruit. 
He read the papers, however, and ** for the first 
time realised \^hat a tragedy the life in Cheyne 
Row had been." That he exaggerated the purport 
of what he read is likely enough. When there are 
quarrels between husband and wife, a man natur- 
ally inclines to take the woman's side. Froude, 
as he says himself, was haunted by Mrs. Carlyle's 
look of suffering, physical rather than mental, and 
it would necessarily colour his judgment of the 
facts. At all events his conclusion was that 
Carlyle had just ground for remorse, and that in 
collecting the letters he had partially expiated 
his offence. When Mrs. Carlyle's Correspondence 
came to be published it was seen that there were 
two sides to the question, and that, if he had 
leisure to think of what he was doing, Carlyle 
could be the most considerate of husbands. Irrit- 
able and selfish he might be. Deliberately cruel 
he never was. Froude, with his accustomed 
frankness, told Carlyle at once what he thought. 
Mrs. Carlyle's letters should be published, not 
alone, but with the memoir composed by himself. 
Carlyle had originally intended that this memoir, 
or sketch, as it rather is, should be preserved, 
but not printed. Afterwards, however, he gave 
it to Froude, and added an express permission 
to do as he liked with it. Froude was not 



296 LIFE OF FROUDE 

content with his own opinion. He consulted John 
Forster, the biographer of Goldsmith and of 
Dickens, a common friend of Carlyle and himself. 
Forster read the documents, and promised that 
he would speak to Carlyle about them, giving no 
opinion to Froude, but intimating that he should 
impress upon Carlyle the need for making things 
clear in his will. This most sensible advice was 
duly taken, and Carlyle' s will, signed on the 6th 
of February, 1873, which nominated Forster and 
his own brother John as executors, contained the 
following passage : 

" My manuscript entitled ' Letters and Memo- 
rials of Jane Welsh Carlyle ' is to me naturally, 
in my now bereaved state, of endless value, though 
of what value to others I cannot in the least 
clearly judge ; and indeed for the last four years 
am imperatively forbidden to write farther on it, 
or even to look farther into it. Of that manuscript 
my kind, considerate, and ever faithful friend, 
James Anthony Froude (as he has lovingly pro- 
mised me) takes precious charge in my stead. 
To him therefore I give it with whatever other 
fartherances and elucidations may be possible, and 
I solemnly request of him to do his best and wisest 
in the matter, as I feel assured he will. There 
is incidentally a quantity of autobiographic record 
in my notes to this manuscript ; but except as 
subsidiary and elucidative of the text I put no 
value on such. Express biography of me I had 
really rather that there should be none. James 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 297 

Anthony Froude, John Forster, and my brother 
John, will make earnest survey of the manuscript 
and its subsidiaries there or elsewhere in respect 
to this as well as to its other bearings ; their 
united utmost candour and impartiality, taking 
always Jame^ Anthony Froude's practicality along 
with it, will evidently furnish a better judgment 
than mine can be. The manuscript is by no means 
ready for publication ; nay, the questions how, 
when (after what delay, seven, ten years) it, or 
any portion of it, should be published are still 
dark to me ; but on all such points James Anthony 
Froude's practical summing up and decision is to 
be taken as mine." No expression of confidence 
could well be stronger, no discretion could well be 
more absolute. So far as one man can substitute 
another for himself, Carlyle substituted Froude. 

Froude was under the impression that Carlyle 
had given him the letters because he wanted them 
to be published, and did not want to publish 
them. Embarrassing as the position was, he 
accepted it in tranquil ignorance of what was to 
come. Two years after the receipt of the memoirs 
and letters there arrived at his house a box of 
more letters, more memoirs, diaries, odds and 
ends, put together without much arrangement in 
the course of a long life. He was told that they 
were the materials for Carlyle' s biography, and 
was begged to undertake it forthwith. So far as his 
own interests were concerned, he had much better 
have declined the task. His History of England 



298 LIFE OF FROUDE 

had given him a name throughout Europe, and 
whatever he wrote was sure to be well received. 
His English in Ireland was approaching com- 
pletion, and he had in his mind a scheme for 
throwing fresh light on the age of Charles V. 
Principal Robertson's standard book was in many 
respects obsolete. The subject was singularly 
attractive, and would have furnished an excellent 
opportunity for bringing out the best side of 
the Roman Catholic Church, which in Charles's 
son, Philip, so familiar in Froude's History of 
England, was seen at its worst or weakest. 
Charles was to him an embodiment of the 
Conservative principle, which he regarded as the 
strongest part of Catholicism, and as needed to 
counteract the social upheaval of the Reforma- 
tion. Such a book he could write in his own way, 
independent of every one. The biographer of 
Carlyle, on the other hand, would be involved in 
numerous difficulties, could hardly avoid giving 
offence, and must sacrifice years of his life to em- 
ployment more onerous, as well as less lucrative, 
than writing a History of his own . Carlyle, however, 
was persistent, and Froude yielded. After Mrs. 
Carlyle' s death they had met constantly, and the 
older man relied upon the younger as upon a son. 
Froude sat down before the mass of documents 
in the spirit which had encountered the manu- 
scripts of Simancas. No help was accorded him. 
He had to spell out the narrative for himself. On 
one point he did venture to consult Carlyle, but 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 299 

Carlyle shrank from the topic with evident pain, 
and the conversation was not renewed. It 
appeared from Mrs. Carlyle' s letters and journals 
that she had been jealous of Lady Ashburton, 
formerly Lady Harriet Baring, and by birth a 
Sandwich Montagu. " Lady Ashburton/' says 
Charles Greville, writing on the occasion of her 
death in 1857, " was perhaps, on the whole, the 
most conspicuous woman in the society of the 
present day. She was undoubtedly very intelli- 
gent, with much quickness and vivacity in con- 
versation, and by dint of a good deal of desultory 
reading and social intercourse with men more or 
less distinguished, she had improved her mind, 
and made herself a very agreeable woman, and 
had acquired no small reputation for ability and 
wit. . . . She was, or affected to be, extremely 
intimate with every man whose literary celebrity 
or talents constituted their only attraction, and, 
while they were gratified by the attentions of the 
great lady, her vanity was flattered by the homage 
of such men, of whom Carlyle was the principal. 
It is only justice to her to say that she treated 
her literary friends with constant kindness and 
the most unselfish attentions. They and their 
wives and children (when they had any) were 
received at her house in the country, and enter- 
tained there for weeks without any airs of patron- 
age, and with a spirit of genuine benevolence as 
well as hospitality." ^ 

1 The Greviile Memoirs, vol, iii. pp. 109, no. 



300 LIFE OF FROUDE 

But Lady Ashburton and Mrs. Carlyle did not 
get on. As Carlyle' s wife the latter would doubt- 
less have been welcome enough at the Grange. 
Being much cleverer than Lady Ashburton, she 
seemed to dispute a supremacy which had not 
hitherto been challenged, and the relations of the 
two women were strained. Carlyle, on the other 
hand, had become, so Froude discovered from his 
wife's journal, romantically, though quite inno- 
cently, attached to Lady Ashburton, and this 
was one cause of dissension at Cheyne Row. 
There was nothing very dreadful in the disclosure. 
Carlyle was a much safer acquaintance for the 
other sex than Robert Burns, whose conversation 
carried the Duchess of Gordon off her feet, and 
Mrs. Carlyle' s jealousy was not of the ordinary 
kind. Still, the incident was not one of those 
which lighten a biographer's responsibility. Froude 
has himself explained, in a paper not intended for 
publication, the light in which it appeared to him. 
" Intellectual and spiritual affection being all 
which he had to give, Mrs. Carlyle naturally looked 
on these at least as exclusively her own. She had 
once been his idol, she was now a household 
drudge, and the imaginative homage which had 
been once hers was given to another." Froude's 
posthumous championship of Mrs. Carlyle may 
have led him to magnify unduly the importance 
of domestic disagreements. But however that 
may be, the opinions which he formed, and which 
Carlyle gave him the means of forming, did not 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 301 

increase the attractions of the duty he had under- 
taken to discharge. 

Froude's own admiration of Carlyle was, it 
must always be remembered, not in the least 
diminished by what he read. He still thought 
him the greatest man of his age, and believed 
that his good influence would expand with time. 
That there should be spots on the sun did not 
disturb him, especially as moral perfection was 
the last thing he had ever attributed to Carlyle. 
Meanwhile his position was altered, and altered, 
as it seems, without his knowledge. Carlyle' s 
original executors were his brother. Dr. Carlyle, 
and John Forster. Forster died in 1876, and by 
acodicil dated the 8th of November, 1878, Froude's 
name was put in the place of his, Sir James 
Stephen, the eminent jurist, afterwards a judge of 
the High Court, being added as a third. At that 
time Froude was engaged, to Carlyle's knowledge, 
upon the first volume of the Life. At Carlyle's 
request he had given up the editorship of Fraser's 
Magazine, which brought him in a comfortable 
income of four hundred a year, and he had wholly 
devoted himself to the service of his master. 
Carlyle expected that he would soon follow his 
wife. He survived her fifteen years, during which 
he wrote little, for his right hand was partly 
paralysed, and continually meditated upon the 
future destiny of the memorials entrusted to 
Froude. 

In 1879 ^^- Carlyle died, leaving Froude 



302 LIFE OF FROUDE 

and Stephen the sole executors under the will. 
Late in the autumn of that year Carlyle suddenly 
said to Froude, " When you have done with 
those papers of mine, give them to Mary." Mary 
was his niece, Mary Aitken, Mrs. Alexander 
Carlyle, who had lived in Cheyne Row to take 
care of her uncle since her aunt's death, and 
was married to her cousin. Carlyle speaks of 
her with great affection in his will, " for the 
loving care and unwearied patience and help- 
fulness she has shown to me in these my 
last solitary and infirm years." It was natural 
that he should think of her, and should con- 
template leaving her more than the five hundred 
pounds specified in his original will. But this 
particular request was so startling that Froude 
ought to have made further inquiries. The 
papers had been given to him, and he might 
have destroyed them. They had been, without 
his knowledge, left in the will to John Carlyle, 
who was then dead. Carlyle' s mind was not 
clear about the fate of his manuscripts. Froude, 
however, acquiesced, and did not even ask that 
Carlyle should put his intentions on paper. At 
this time, while he was writing the first volume 
of the Life^ Froude made up his mind to keep 
back Mrs. Carlyle' s letters, with her husband's 
sketch of her, to suppress the fact that there 
had been any disagreement between them, but 
to publish in a single volume Carlyle' s remin- 
iscences of his father, of Edward Irving, of Francis 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 303 

Jeffrey, and of Robert Southey. To this separate 
publication Carlyle at once assented. But in 
November, 1880, when he was eighty-five, and 
Mrs. Carlyle had been fourteen years in her grave, 
he asked what Froude really meant to do with 
the letters afid the memoir. Forced to make up 
his mind at once, and believing that publica- 
tion was Carlyle' s own wish, he replied that he 
meant to publish them. The old man seemed 
to be satisfied, and no more was said. Froude 
drew the inference that most people would, in 
the circumstances, have drawn. He concluded 
that Carlyle wished to relieve himself of respon- 
sibility, to get the matter off his mind, to have 
no disclosure in his lifetime, but to die with the 
assurance that after his death the whole story of 
his wife's heroism would be told. 

On the 4th of February, 1881, Carlyle died. 
Froude, Tyndall, and Lecky attended his quiet 
funeral in the kirkyard of Ecclefechan, where he 
lies with his father and mother. Dean Stanley had 
offered Westminster Abbey, but the family had 
refused. Carlyle was buried among his own 
people, who best understood him, and whom he 
best understood. The two volumes of remi- 
niscences at once appeared, including sketches 
of Irving and Jeffrey, with the memoir of Mrs. 
Carlyle. But even before the publication of 
these volumes, which came out early in March, 
a question, which was ominous of future trouble, 
arose out of copyright and title to profits. A 



304 LIFE OF FROUDE 

fortnight after Carlyle's death Fronde's co-executor, 
Mr. Jnstice Stephen, had a personal interview 
with Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, in the presence of 
her husband, and of Mr. Ouvry, who was acting 
as solicitor for all parties. On this occasion 
Mrs. Carlyle said that Froude had promised her 
the whole profits of the Reminiscences, that her 
uncle had approved of this arrangement, and 
that she would not take less. Thus the first 
difference between Froude and the Carlyle family 
related to money. Mrs. Carlyle did not know 
that the memoirs of her aunt would be among 
the reminiscences, and the sum which Froude 
had promised her was the speculative value of 
an American edition, which was never in fact 
realised. 

In lieu of this he offered half the English profits, 
and brought out the Reminiscences, '' Jane Welsh 
Carlyle " being among them. They were eagerly 
read, not merely by all lovers of good literature, 
but by all lovers of gossip, good or bad. Carlyle' s 
pen, Hke Dante's, ''bit into the live man's flesh for 
parchment." He had a Tacitean power of drawing 
a portrait with a phrase which haunted the 
memory. James Carlyle, the Annandale mason, 
was as vivid as Jonathan Oldbuck himself. But 
it was upon Mrs. Carlyle that public interest 
fastened. The delineation of her was most beauti- 
ful, and most pathetic. There were few expres- 
sions of actual remorse, and Carlyle was not the 
first man to feel that the value of a blessing is 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 305 

enhanced by loss. But there was an undertone 
of something more than regret, a suspicion or 
suggestion of penitence, which set people talking. 
It is always pleasant to discover that a preacher 
of righteousness has not been a good example him- 
self, and "poor Mrs. Carlyle" received much post- 
humous sympathy, as cheap as it was useless. 
Whether Froude should have published the 
memoir is a question which may be discussed 
till the end of time. He conceived himself to be 
under a pledge. He had given his word to a dead 
man, who could not release him. It seems, how- 
ever, clear that he should have taken the course 
least injurious to Carlyle' s memory, and in such a 
very delicate matter he might well have asked 
advice. From the purely literary point of view there 
could be no doubt at all. Not even Frederick the 
Great J that storehouse of " jewels five words 
long," contains more sparkling gems than these 
two precious little volumes. Froude speaks in his 
preface of having made " requisite omissions." 
A few more omissions might have been made with 
advantage, especially a brutal passage about 
Charles Lamb and his sister, which Elia's countless 
admirers find it hard to forgive. Mrs. Procter, 
widow of Barry Cornwall, the poet, and herself 
a most remarkable woman, was so much annoyed 
by the description of her mother, Mrs. Basil 
Montagu, and her step-father, the editor of Bacon,^ 
that she published some early and rather obsequious 

^JCarlyle's Miscellanies, i. 223-230. 
(2310) 20 



3o6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

letters written to them by Carlyle himself. But 
the chief outcry was raised by the revelation of 
Carlyle' s most intimate feelings about his wife, 
and about his own behaviour to her. There was 
nothing very bad. He was driven to accuse 
himself of the crime that, when he was writing 
Frederick and she lay ill on the sofa, he used to 
talk to her about the battle of MoUwitz. Froude 
was naturally astonished at the effect produced, but 
then Froude knew Carlyle, and the public did not. 

Trouble, however, awaited him of a very 
different kind. After the publication of the 
Reminiscences, on the 3rd of May, 1881, he returned 
to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle the manuscript note- 
book which contained the memoir of her aunt, as 
Carlyle had requested him to do. At the end of 
it, on separate and watered paper, following a 
rather vague surmise that, though he meant to 
burn the book, it would probably survive him, 
and be read by his friends, were these words : 

" In which event, I solemnly forbid them, each 
and all, to publish this Bit of Writing as it stands 
here ; and warn them that without fit editing no 
part of it should be printed (nor so far as I can 
order, shall ever be) ; and that the ' jit editing ' 
of perhaps nine-tenths of it will, after I am gone, 
have become impossible. 

" T. C. (Saturday, July 28th, 1866)." 

Mary Carlyle at once wrote to The Times, and 
accused Froude of having violated her uncle's 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 307 

express directions. It would have been better 
if Froude had himself quoted this passage, and 
explained the subsequent events which made it 
obsolete. But he never suspected any one, and 
believed at the time of publication in the entire 
friendliness of the Carlyle family. His answer to 
the charge of betraying a trust was simple and 
satisfactory. Carlyle had changed his mind. This 
is clear from the fact that he gave Froude the 
memoir in 1871, five years after it was written, to 
do as he pleased with ; and still clearer from the 
conversation in 1880, when Froude told him that 
he meant to publish, and Carlyle said " Very well." 
Moreover, the will, a formal and legal document, 
expressly gave Froude entire discretion in the 
matter. Froude replied at first with temper and 
judgment. But when Mrs. Carlyle persisted in 
her insinuations, and implied a doubt of his 
veracity, he gave way to a very natural resentment, 
and made a rash offer. He had, he said, brought 
out the memoir by Carlyle' s own desire. He 
should do the same with Mrs. Carlyle's letters, 
for the same reason. ** The remaining letters," 
he went on to say, " which I was directed to return 
to Mrs. Carlyle so soon as I had done with them, 
I will restore at once to any responsible person 
whom she will empower to receive them from me. 
I have reason to complain of the position in which 
I have been placed with respect to these MSS. 
They were sent to me at intervals without inven- 
tory or even a memorial list. I was told that the 



3o8 ;LIFE of FROUDE : 

more I burnt of them the better, and they were 
for several years in my possession before I was 
aware that they were not my own. Happily I 
have destroyed none of them, and Mrs. Carlyle 
may have them all when she pleases." Froude 
can hardly have reflected upon the full significance 
of what he was saying. He had at this time been 
long engaged upon the biography of Carlyle, 
and a considerable part of it was finished. If he 
had then given back his materials, his labour 
would have been wasted, and Carlyle' s own 
personal injunction would have been disobeyed. 
Carlyle' s memory would also have suffered irre- 
parable injury. It is said, and it squares with 
the facts, that Mary Carlyle and her friends, whose 
literary judgment was not quite equal to Carlyle' s 
own, desired to substitute as his biographer some 
learned professor in Scotland.^ If that were their 
object, they are to be congratulated upon their 
failure. For the offer was not carried out. As a 
bare promise without consideration it was not of 
course valid in law, and since no one had acted 
upon it, its withdrawal did no one any harm. 
There were also legal difficulties which made its 
fulfilment impossible. According to counsel's 
opinion, dated the 13th of May, 1881, Carlyle's re- 
quest that the papers should be restored was " an 
attempted verbal testamentary disposition, which 
had no legal authority." The documents belonged 

1 David Masson, the editor of Milton, I have been told, but I 
do not know. 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 309 

not to Froude personally, but to himself and Fitz- 
james Stephen, as joint executors, and Stephen 
has left it on record that he would not have 
consented to their return until Froude' s task was 
accomplished. 

Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's view was not shared 
by other and older members of her uncle's family. 
During the summer of 1881 Froude received from 
Carlyle's surviving brother, James, and his sur- 
viving sister, Mrs. Austin, a letter dated the 8th of 
August, and written from Ecclefechan, in which he 
was implored not to give up his task of writing the 
Life, and assured of their perfect reliance upon 
him. This assurance is the more significant 
because it was given after the publication of the 
Reminiscences. It was renewed on James Carlyle's 
part through his son after the appearance of Mrs. 
Carlyle's letters in 1883, and by Mrs. Austin 
through her daughter upon receiving the final 
volumes of the biography in 1884. Miss Austin 
wrote at her mother's request on the 25th of 
October, 1884, '' My uncle at all times placed 
implicit confidence in you, and that confidence has 
not, I am sure, in any way been abused. He 
always spoke of you as his best and truest friend." 
Time has amply vindicated Carlyle's opinion, and 
his discretion in the choice of a biographer. 

As Mrs. Alexapder Carlyle considered the 
publication of the memoir, which is by far the 
most interesting part of the Reminiscences, to 
be an impropriety, and a breach of faith, it might 



310 LIFE OF FROUDE 

have been supposed that she would repudiate the 
idea of deriving any profit from the book. On 
the contrary, she attempted to secure the whole, 
and refused to take a part, declaring that Froude 
had promised to give her all. Froude's re- 
collection was that, thinking Carlyle's provision 
for his niece insufficient,^ he had promised her the 
iVmerican income, which he had been toldwouldbe 
large, though it turned out to be very small indeed, 
in acknowledgment of her services as a copyist. 
Ultimately he made her the generous offer of fifteen 
hundred pounds, retaining only three hundred 
for himself. She accepted the money, though 
she denied that it was a gift. In the opinion of 
Mr. Justice Stephen, which is worth rather more 
than hers, it was legally a gift, though there may 
have been in the circumstances a moral obligation. 
But Mary Carlyle put forward another claim, of 
which the executors heard for the first time in 
June, 1881. She then said that in 1875, six years 
before his death, her uncle had orally given her 
all his papers, and handed her the keys of the 
receptacles which contained them. 

Her recollection, however, must have been 
erroneous. For the bulk of the papers had been 
in Froude's possession since the end of 1873, 
or at latest the beginning of 1874, and were 

* The provision for Mary Carlyle in the will of 1873 was, 
however, materially increased by the codicil of 1878, under 
which she received th« house in Cheyne Row after the death 
of her uncle John, who died before her uncle Thomas. 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 311 

not in the drawers or boxes which the keys 
would have opened. On the strength of her 
own statement, which was never tested in a 
court of law and was inconsistent with the 
clause in Carlyle's will leaving his manuscripts 
to his brother John, Mrs. Carlyle demanded 
that Froude should surrender the materials for 
his biography, and not complete it. He put 
himself into the hands of his co-executor, who 
successfully resisted the demand, and Froude, 
in accordance with Carlyle's clearly expressed 
desire, kept the papers until he had done with 
them. In a long and able letter to Froude 
himself, printed for private circulation in 1886, 
Mr. Justice Stephen says, with natural pride, 
" It was my whole object throughout to prevent 
a law-suit for the determination of what I felt 
was a merely speculative question, and to defeat 
the attempt made to prevent you from writing 
Mr. Carlyle's life, and I am happy to say I suc- 
ceeded." The public will always be grateful 
to the Judge, for there was no one living except 
Froude who had both the knowledge and the 
eloquence that could have produced such a 
book as his. Of the Reminiscences Froude wrote 
to Skelton, " To me in no one of his writings 
does he appear in a more beautiful aspect ; and 
so, I am still convinced, will all mankind even- 
tually think." 

His own frame of mind at this period is vividly 
expressed in a letter to Max Miiller, dated the 



312 LIFE OF FROUDE 

8th of December, 1881. After some references to 
Goethe's letters, and German copyright, he con- 
tinues : 

" So much ill will has been shown me in the 
case of other letters that I walk as if on hot ashes, 
and often curse the day when I undertook the busi- 
ness. I had intended, when I finished my English 
history, to set myself quietly down to Charles 
the Fifth, and spend the rest of my life on him. 
I might have been half through by this time, 
and the world all in good humour with me. My 
ill star was uppermost when I laid this aside. 
There are objections to every course which I 
can follow. The arguments for and against were 
so many and so strong that Carlyle himself could 
not decide what was to be done, and left it to me. 
He could see all sides of the question. Other 
people will see one, or one more strongly than 
another, whatever it may be ; and therefore, do 
what I will, a large body of people will blame 
me. Nay, if I threw it up, a great many would 
blame me. What have I done that I should 
be in such a strait ? But I am sixty-four years 
old, and I shall soon be beyond it all." 

The first two volumns of the biography, covering 
the earlier half of Carlyle's life, when his home 
was in Scotland, from 1795 to 1835, appeared 
in 1882, and added to the hubbub. The public 
had got on a false scent, and gossip had found 
a congenial theme. Carlyle was in truth one 
of the noblest men that ever lived. His faults 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 313 

were all on the surface. His virtues were those 
which lie at the foundation of our being. For 
the common objects of vulgar ambition he had 
a scorn too deep for words. He never sought, 
and he did not greatly value, the praise of men. 
He had a message to deliver, in which he pro- 
foundly believed, and he could no more go beyond 
it, or fall short of it, than Balaam when he was 
tempted by Balak. Contemporaries without a 
hundredth part of his talent, even for practical 
business, attained high positions, or positions 
which the world thought high. Carlyle did not 
envy them, was not dazzled by them, but held 
to his own steadfast purpose of preaching truth 
and denouncing shams. His generosity to his 
own family was boundless, and he never ex- 
pected thanks. He was tender-hearted, forgiving, 
kind, in all great matters, whenever he had time 
to think. Courage and truth made him indifferent 
to fashion and popularity. Popularity was not 
his aim. His aim was to tell people what was 
for their good, whether they would hear or 
whether they would forbear. Froude had so 
much confidence in the essential greatness of the 
man that he did not hesitate to show him as he 
was, not a prodigy of impossible perfection, but 
a sterling character and a lofty genius. There- 
fore his portrait liyes, and will live, when bio- 
graphies written for flattery or for edification have 
been consigned to boxes or to lumber-rooms. 
Froude was only following the principles laid 



314 LIFE OF FROUDE 

down by Carlyle himself. In reviewing Lockhart's 
Life of Scott, Carlyle emptied the vials of his scorn, 
which were ample and capacious, upon " English 
biography, bless its mealy mouth." The censure 
of Lockhart for " personalities, indiscretion," vio- 
lating the " sanctities of private life," was, he 
said, better than a good many praises. A bio- 
grapher should speak the truth, having the fear 
of God before his eyes, and no other fear whatever. 
That Lockhart had done, and in the eyes of 
Carlyle, who admired him as he admired few men, 
it was a supreme merit. For the hypothesis that 
Lockhart " at heart had a dislike to Scott, and 
had done his best in an underhand, treacherous 
manner to dis-hero him," he expressed, as he well 
might, unbounded contempt. It seems incredible 
now that such a theory should ever, in or out 
of Bedlam, have been held. Perhaps it will be 
equally incredible some day that a similar view 
should have been taken of the relations between 
Froude and Carlyle. 

It is no disparagement of Lockhart' s great book 
to say that in this respect of telling the truth 
he had an easy task. For Scott was as nearly 
faultless as a human creature can be. Every one 
who knew him loved him, and he loved all men, 
even Whigs. His early life, prosperous and suc- 
cessful, was as different as possible from Carlyle' s. 
It was not until the years were closing in upon 
him that misfortune came, and called out that 
serene, heroic fortitude which his diary has made 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 315 

an everlasting possession for mankind. Carlyle 
once said in a splenetic mood that the lives of men 
of letters were the most miserable records in 
literature, except the Newgate Calendar. There 
could be no more striking examples to the contrary 
than Scott's life and his own. Perhaps Froude 
went too far in the direction indicated by Carlyle 
himself ; abounded, as the French say, too much 
in Carlyle' s sense. In his zeal to paint his hero, 
as his hero's hero wished to be painted, with the 
warts, he may have made those disfiguring marks 
too prominent. That a great man often has many 
small faults is a truism which does not need 
perpetual insistence. Froude is rather too fond, 
like Carlyle himself, of taking up and repeating 
a single phrase. When, for example, Carlyle' s 
mother said, half in fun, that he was " gey ill to 
deal wi'," she was not stating a general proposition, 
but referring to a particular, and not very impor- 
tant, case of diet. When Miss Welsh, who was in 
love with Edward Irving, told Carlyle in 1823 
that she could only love him as a brother, and 
could not marry him, it is a too summary judg- 
ment, and not compatible with Froude's own 
language elsewhere, to say that had they left 
matters thus it would have been better for both 
of them. If she said at the end of her life, " I 
married for ambition, Carlyle has exceeded all 
that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him — and 
I am miserable," ^ she said also, many times 

^ Life, i. 302. 



3i6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

over, that he was the tenderest of husbands, and 
that no mother could have watched her health 
with more solicitude. He gave what he had to 
give. He could not give what he had not. " Of 
all the men whom I have ever seen," said Froude, 
" Carlyle was the least patient of the common 
woes of humanity." The fact is that his natural 
eloquence was irrepressible. If Miss Edge worth's 
King Corny had the gout, nature said " Howl," 
and he howled. If Carlyle had indigestion, he 
broke into picturesque rhetoric about the demon- 
hag which was riding him no-whither. A far more 
characteristic passage than his mother's *' gey ill 
to deal wi' " is his own simple confession to his 
father, " When I shout murder, I am not always 
being killed." ^ 

That Froude' s ideas of a biographer's duty were 
the same as his own Carlyle had good reason to 
know. Froude had stated them plainly enough in 
Fraser's Magazine, which Carlyle always saw, for 
June, 1876. He prefaced an article on the present 
Sir George Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, a daring 
attack upon that historian for the very faults that 
were attributed to himself, with the following 
sentences : " Every man who has played a distin- 
guished part in life, and has largely influenced 
either the fortunes or the opinions of his con- 
temporaries, becomes the property of the public. 
We desire to know, and we have a right to know, 
the inner history of the person who has obtained 

^ Life, i. 209, 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 317 

our confidence." This doctrine would not have 
been universally accepted. Tennyson, for instance, 
would have vehemently denied it. But it is at 
least frankly expressed, and Carlyle must have 
known very v^ell what sort of biography Froude 
would write. 

If Froude dwelt on Carlyle' s failings, it was 
because he knew that his reputation would bear 
the strain. He has been justified by the result, 
for Carlyle' s fame stands higher to-day than it 
ever stood before. That man, be he prince or 
peasant, is not to be envied who can read Fronde's 
account of Carlyle' s early life without feeling the 
better for it. It is by no means a cheerful story. 
The first forty years of Carlyle' s existence, when 
the French Revolution had not been published, 
were an apparently hopeless struggle against 
poverty and obscurity. Sartor Resartus was 
scarcely understood by any one, and though his 
wife saw that it was a work of genius, it seemed 
to most people unintelligible mysticism. With the 
splendid exception of Goethe, hardly any one saw 
at that time what Carlyle was. He was too 
transcendental for The Edinburgh Review, to which 
he had occasionally contributed, and the payment 
for Sartor in Eraser's Magazine was beggarly.^ 
For some years after his marriage in 1826 Carlyle 
was within measurable distance of starvation. 
Jeffrey had to explain to him, or did explain to 

^ I need hardly say that this was long before Fronde's connection 
vfitii'^Fraser. .- , 



3i8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

him, that he was unfit for any public employment. 
He could not dig. To beg he was ashamed. 
When his father died in 1832 he refused to touch 
a penny of what the old man left, lest there should 
not be enough for his brothers and sisters. His 
personal dignity made it impossible for any 
stranger to assist him, except by giving him work. 
He worked incessantty, devouring books of all 
sorts, especially French and German, translating 
Wilhelm Meister so superbly well as to make it 
almost an English book. There was no greater 
intellect then in the British Islands than Carlyle's, 
and very few with which it could be compared. 
Yet it was difficult for him to earn a bare subsis- 
tence for his wife and himself. Froude has brought 
out with wonderful power and beauty the character 
which in Carlyle was above and beyond all the 
gifts of his mind. If he was a severe critic of 
others, he was a still sterner judge of himself. It 
would have been easy for him to make money 
by writing what people wanted to read. He was 
determined that if they read anything of his, they 
should read what would do them good. His 
isolation was complete. His wife encouraged him 
and believed in him. Nobody could help him. 

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve. 
And hope without an object cannot live. 

Carlyle, unlike Coleridge, was a real moralist, 
and it was duty, not hope, that guided his pen. 
Health he had, though he never would admit it. 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 319 

and with excellent sense he invested his first 
savings in a horse. His frugal life was at least 
wholesome, and the one comfort with which he 
could not dispense was the cheap comfort of 
tobacco. Idleness would have been impossible to 
him if he had been a millionaire, and labour was 
his refuge from despondency. Like most hu- 
mourists, he had low spirits, though his " genial 
sympathy with the under side of things," to quote 
his own definition of the undefinable, must have 
been some solace for his woes. He could read all 
day without wearying, so that he need never be 
alone. As a talker no one surpassed him, or 
perhaps equalled him at his best, in London or 
even in Annandale. What ought to have struck 
all readers of these volumes was the courage, the 
patience, the dignity, the generosity, and the 
genius of this Scottish peasant. What chiefly 
struck too many of them was that he did not get 
on with his wife. 

Froude's defence is first Carlyle's precept, and 
secondly his own conviction that the truth would 
be advantageous rather than injurious to Carlyle. 
Carlyle's way of writing about other people, for 
instance Charles Lamb, Saint Charles, as Thack- 
eray called him, is sometimes unpardonable ; 
and if Froude had suppressed those passages he 
would have done well. His own personal conduct 
is a lesson to us all, and that lesson is in Froude' s 
pages for every one to read. '' What a noisy 
inanity is this world," wrote Carlyle in his diary 



320 LIFE OF FROUDE 

at the opening of the year 1835. Without the 
few great men who, Hke Carlyle, can hft themselves 
and others above it, it would be still noisier, and 
still more inane. 

f Next year the gossips had a still richer feast. 
In 1883 Froude, faithful to his trust, brought out in 
three volumes Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh 
Carlyle. The true and permanent interest of 
this book is that it introduced the British and 
American public to some of the most brilliantly 
witty and amusing epistles that the English 
language contains. Indeed, there are very few 
letter-writers in any language who can be com- 
pared with Mrs. Carlyle. Inferior to her husband 
in humourous description, as in depth of thought, 
she surpassed him in liveliness of wit, in pungency 
of satire, and in terseness of expression. Her 
narrative is inimitable, and sometimes, as in the 
account of her solitary visit to her old home at 
Haddington twenty-three years after her marriage, 
her dramatic power is overwhelming. Carlyle 
himself had been familiar to the public for half 
a century through his books. Until Mrs. Carlyle's 
letters appeared the world knew nothing of her 
at all, except through her husband's sketch. 
Considering that good letter- writers are almost 
as rare as good poets, and that Jane Carlyle is 
one of the very best, the general reader might 
have been simply grateful, as perhaps he was. 
But for purposes of scandal the value of the 
book was the light it threw upon the matrimonial 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 321 

squabbles, actual or imaginary, of two remark- 
able persons. Mrs. Carlyle had long been dead, 
and her relations with her husband were of no 
importance to any one. But the trivial mind 
grasps at trivialities, and will not be satisfied 
without them. Thousands who were quite in- 
capable of appreciating the letters as literature 
could read between the lines, and apply the 
immortal principle that a warming-pan is a 
cover for hidden fire. Unfortunately, Carlyle' s 
heart-broken ejaculations over his dead wife's 
words leant themselves to theories and surmises. 
He thought that he had not made enough of her 
when she was alive, and apparently he wanted 
the world to know that he thought so. Yet the 
bulk of the letters are not those of an unhappy, 
oppressed, down-trodden woman, nor of a woman 
unable to take care of herself. Some few are 
intensely miserable, almost like the cries of a 
wounded animal, and these, even in extracts, 
might well have been omitted. Mrs. Carlyle 
would not have written them if she had been 
herself, and in a collection of more than three 
hundred they would not have been missed. Some 
thought also that there were too many household 
details.^ On the whole, however, these letters, 
with the others published in the Life^ are a rich 
store-house, and they retain their permanent value, 
untouched by ephemeral rumour. 

* " A good woman," I remember Lord Bowen saying of Mrs. 
Carlyle, " with perhaps an excessive passion for insecticide.*' 
(2310) 21 



322 LIFE OF FROUDE 

I doubt if he bathed before he dressed. 

A brasier ? the pagan, he burned perfumes ! 

You see, it is proved, what the neighbours guessed : 

His wife and himself had separate rooms. 

Carlyle had been dead more than twenty 
years before the controversies about all that was 
unimportant in him flickered out and died an 
unsavoury death. The vital fact about him and 
his wife is that they contributed, if not equally, 
at least in an unparalleled degree, to the common 
stock of genius. But for Froude we might 
never have known that Mrs. Carlyle had genius 
at all. Through him we have a series of letters 
not surpassed by Lady Mary Wortley's, or by 
any woman's except Madame de Sevigne's. 

Then in 1884 Froude completed his task with 
Carlyle' s Life in London, a biographical masterpiece 
if ever there was one. It is written on the same 
principle of telling the truth, painting the warts. 
But it brings out even more clearely than its prede- 
cessor the essential qualities of Carlyle. In one way 
this was easier. The period of fruitless struggle was 
almost over when Carlyle left Craigenputtock in 
1834. After the appearance of The French Revolu- 
tion in 1838 he was famous, and every one who read 
anything read that book. Southey read it six 
times. Dickens carried it about with him, and 
founded on it his Tale of Two Cities. Thackeray 
wrote an enthusiastic review of it. Its wisdom and 
eloquence were a treasure to Dr. Arnold, who knew, 
if any man did, what history was. It was like 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 323 

no other book that had ever been written, and 
critics were driven to talk of Aeschylus or Isaiah. 
Such comparisons profit little or nothing. The 
French Revolution is an original book by a man 
who believed^ in God's judgment upon sin. The 
memoirs of Madame Dubarry might have suggested 
it ; but it came from Carlyle's own heart and soul. 

Professors may prove to their own satisfaction 
that it is not history at all, and Carlyle has 
been posthumously convicted of miscalculating 
the distance from Paris to Varennes. It remains 
one of the books that cannot be forgotten, that 
fascinate all readers, even the professors them- 
selves. And yet, greater than the book itself is 
Carlyle's behaviour when the first volume had been 
lost by Mill.^ Mill, himself in extreme misery, had 
to come and tell the author. He stayed a long 
time, and when he had gone Carlyle said to his 
wife, " Well, Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up; we 
must endeavour to hide from him how very serious 
this business is to us." Maximus in maximis ; 
minimus in minimis \ such was Carlyle, and as 
such Froude exhibits him, not concealing the fact 
that in small matters he could be very small. 

The two personalities of Carlyle and his wife 
are so fascinating that there may be some excuse 
for regarding even their quarrels, which were 
chiefly on her side;^ with interest. But Frederick 

1 -- Both he and she were noble and generous, but his was the 
soft heart and hers the stern one." — Carlyle's Life in London, 
vol. ii. p. 171. 



324 LIFE OF FROUDE 

the Great will survive these broils, and so long as 
Carlyle's books are read his biography will be 
read too, as his best extraneous memorial, just, 
eloquent, appreciative, sincere. Carlyle was no 
model of austere, colourless consistency. His 
reverent admiration of Peel, whom he knew, is 
quite irreconcilable with his savage contempt of 
Gladstone, whom he did not know. Peel was a 
great Parliamentary statesman, and Gladstone 
was his disciple. Both belonged equally to the 
class which Carlyle denounced as the ruin of 
England, and rose to supreme power through the 
representative system that he especially abhorred. 
On no important point, while Peel was alive, did 
they differ. *' On the whole," said Gladstone, 
" Peel was the greatest man I ever knew," and in 
finance he was always a Peelite. That a man 
who was four times Prime Minister of England 
could have been a canting hypocrite, deceiving 
himself and others, implies that the whole nation 
was fit for a lunatic asylum. Carlyle seldom 
studied a political question thoroughly, and of 
public men with whom he was acquainted only 
through the newspapers he was no judge. Personal 
contact produced estimates which, though they 
might be harsh, hasty, and unfair, were always 
interesting, and sometimes marvellously accurate. 
Of Peel, for instance, though he saw him very 
seldom, he has left a finished portrait, not omitting 
the great Minister's humour, for any trace of 
which the Peel papers may be searched in vain. 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 325 

The same can be said of Thirlwall, barring the 
groundless insinuation that he was dishonest in 
accepting a bishopric. A very different sort of 
bishop, Samuel Wilberforce, Carlyle liked for his 
cleverness, tl^ough here too he could not help 
suggesting that on the foundation, or rather 
baselessness, of the Christian religion, " Sam " 
agreed with him. The great historian of the age 
he did not appreciate at all. But, then, he never 
met Macaulay. " Some little ape called Keble,'* 
is not a happy formula for the author of the 
Christian Year, and this is one of the phrases 
which I think Froude might well have omitted, 
as meaning no more than a casual execration. 
Yet how minute are these defects, when set beside 
the intrinsic grandeur of the central figure in the 
book. Carlyle mixed with all sorts and conditions 
of men and women, from the peasants of Annandale 
to the best intellectual society of London. He 
was always, or almost always, the first man in 
the company, not elated, nor over-awed, " standing 
on the adamantine basis of his manhood, casting 
aside all props and shoars." From snobbishness, 
the corroding vice of English society, he was, 
though he once jocularly charged himself with it, 
entirely free. He judged individuals on their 
merits with an eye as piercing and as pitiless as 
Saint Simon's. On pretence and affectation he 
had no mercy. Learning, intellect, character, 
humility, integrity, worth, he held always in true 
esteem. As Froude says, and it is the final word. 



326 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Carlyle's " extraordinary talents were devoted, 
with an equally, extraordinary purity of purpose, 
to his Maker's service, so far as he could see and 
understand that Maker's will," He led " a life 
of single-minded effort to do right and only that ; 
of constant truthfulness in word and deed.'* 

That the man who wrote these sentences at 
the close of a book with which they are quite in 
keeping should have been reviled as a traitor to 
Carlyle's memory is strange indeed. To Froude 
it was incredible. Conscious of regarding Carlyle 
as the greatest moral and intellectual force of his 
time, he could not have been more astonished 
if he had been charged with picking a pocket. 
For criticism of his own judgment he was pre- 
pared. He knew well that acute differences of 
opinion might arise. The dishonesty and malig- 
nity imputed to him were outside the habits of 
his life and the range of his ideas. He lived in 
a society where such things were not done, and 
where nobody was suspected of doing them. He 
had fulfilled, to the best of his ability, Carlyle's 
own injunctions, and he had faithfully portrayed 
as he knew him the man whom of all others he 
most revered. He was bewildered, almost dazed, 
at what seemed to him the perverse and unscrupu- 
lous recklessness of his accusers. Anonymous and 
abusive letters reached him daily ; some even of 
his own friends looked coldly on him. He was a 
sensitive man, and he felt it deeply. He shrank 
from going out unless he knew exactly whom he 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 327 

was to meet. But his pride came to his rescue, 
and he preferred suffering injustice in silence to 
discussing in pubhc, as though it admitted of 
doubt, the question whether he was an honest 
man. He d^id, however, invite the opinion of his 
co-executor, an Enghsh judge, a close friend of 
Carlyle, and a man whose personal integrity was 
above all suspicion. Although the calumnies 
which gave Froude so much distress have long 
sunk into an oblivion of contempt, and require no 
formal refutation, the conclusive verdict of Sir 
James Fitzjames Stephen may be fitly quoted here : 
*' For about fifteen years I was the intimate 
friend and constant companion of both of you 
[Carlyle and Froude], and never in my life did I 
see any one man so much devoted to any other as 
you were to him during the whole of that period 
of time. The most affectionate son could not have 
acted better to the most venerated father. You 
cared for him, soothed him, protected him, as a 
guide might protect a weak old man down a steep 
and painful path. The admiration you have 
habitually expressed for him was unqualified. 
You never said to me one ill-natured word about 
him down to this day. It is to me wholly in- 
credible that anything but a severe regard for 
truth, learnt to a great extent from his teaching, 
could ever have. led you to embody in your por- 
trait of him a delineation of the faults and weak- 
nesses which mixed with his great qualities." ^ 

' My Relations with Carlyle, p. 62. 



328 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Calling witnesses to the character of such a man 
as Froude is itself almost an insult. But there is 
one judgment so valuable and so emphatic that 
I cannot refrain from citing it. The fifteenth Earl 
of Derby held such a high position in the political 
world that his literary attainments have been 
comparatively neglected. He was in truth an 
omnivorous reader and a cool, sagacious critic, who 
was not led astray by enthusiasm, and never said 
more than he felt. Writing to Froude on the 
20th of October, 1884, Lord Derby described 
the Life of Carlyle as the most interesting bio- 
graphy in the English language, and added, " I 
think you have finally silenced the foolish talk 
about indiscretion, and treachery to a friend's 
memory. It is clear that you have done only, 
and exactly, what Carlyle wished done : and 
to me it is also apparent that he and you were 
right : that his character could not have been 
understood without a full disclosure of what was 
least attractive in it : and that those defects — 
the product mainly of morbid physical con- 
ditions — do not really take away from his great- 
ness, while they explain much that was dark, 
at least to me, in his writings." Lord Derby's 
opinions were not lightly formed, and he was as 
much guided by pure reason as mortal man 
can be. 

Froude' s own judgment is given in a letter to 
Lady Derby, which contains also much interesting 
speculation on South African politics. Lord 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 329 

Derby, it will be remembered, was at that time 
Secretary of State for the Colonies. 

" October 14th, 1884. — Carlyle in London comes 
out this week. I loved and honoured him above 
all living m^n, and with this feeling I have 
done my best to produce a faithful likeness of 
him. This is a consolation to me, if the only 
one I am likely to have. We shall see. I am 
very anxious about South Africa. I have 
written twice at length to Lord Derby. Un- 
fortunately my view is the exact opposite to 
that which is generally taken. Lord D. is evi- 
dently being driven into active measures against 
his will. My fear is that there will be some half- 
action insufficient to crush the Dutch, and sufficient 
to exasperate them. He relies on the promised 
support of the Colonial Ministry. They may 
promise, but I will believe only when I see it 
that a Cape Ministry and Legislature will oppose 
the Boers in earnest. They will encourage us to 
entangle ourselves, as they did with the Diamond 
Fields, and then leave us to get out of the mess 
as we can. South Africa cannot be self-governed 
in connection with this country, except with the 
good- will of the Dutch population. Enough may 
have been done, however, to quiet Parliament 
(which knows nothing about the matter) in the 
approaching Session — and that, I suppose, is the 
chief consideration. Carnarvon writes to me pre- 
liminary, I suppose, to some attack when Govern- 
ment meets. I have told him exactly what I have 



330 LIFE OF FROUDE 

told Lord D. I hope I may turn out mistaken, 
but the course of things so far has generally con- 
firmed my opinion whenever I have seen my way 
to forming one. I shall be glad to hear what you 
think about the book. From you I shall get the 
friendliest judgment that the circumstances admit 
of, and if you are dissatisfied I shall know what 
to look for from others. The last two hundred 
pages are the most interesting. The drift of the 
whole is that Carlyle was by far the most remark- 
able man of his time — that five hundred years 
hence he will be the only one of us all whose name 
will be so much as remembered, while perhaps he 
may be one who will have reshaped in a permanent 
form the religious belief of mankind. Therefore he 
ought to be known exactly as he was. The argu- 
ment will not be felt by those who disbelieve in 
his greatness, and the idolaters — those who pretend 
to worship without believing — will be savagest of 
all. Idols must be draped in fine clothes, and are 
reduced to nothing by mere human garments." 

Perhaps the fullest, and certainly the least 
reserved, account of Froude's own feelings about 
the book is contained in a letter to Mrs. Charles 
Kingsley : 

'* I tell Longmans to-day to send you the 
book. If you can find time, I shall like to hear 
the independent impression it makes upon you. 
Only remember this : that it was Carlyle' s own 
determination (or at least desire) to do justice to 
his wife, and to do public penance himself — a 



\ 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 331 

desire which I think so noble as to obHterate 
in my own mind the occasion there was for it. 
I have long known the worst, and Charles knew 
it generally. We all knew it, and yet the more 
intimately I knew Carlyle, the more I loved 
and admired him ; and some people, Lord Derby, 
for instance, after reading the Life, can tell me 
that their opinion of him is rather raised than 
diminished. There is something demonic both in 
him and her which will never be adequately 
understood ; but the hearts of both of them 
were sound and true to the last fibre. You may 
guess what difficulty mine has been, and how 
weary the responsibility. You may guess, too, 
how dreary it is to me to hear myself praised 
for frankness, when I find the world all fasten- 
ing on C.'s faults, while the splendid qualities 
are ignored or forgotten. Let them look into 
their own miserable souls, and ask themselves 
how they could bear to have their own private 
histories ransacked and laid bare. I deliberately 
say (and I have said it in the book), that C.'s 
was the finest nature I have ever known. It 
is a Rembrandt picture, but what a picture ! 
Ruskin, too, understands him, and feels too, as 
he should, for me, if that mattered, which it 
doesn't in the least." 

A few years after publication the Reminiscences 
ran out of print, and Froude was anxious to 
bring out a corrected edition. Mrs. Alexander 
Carlyle, however, wished for another editor. The 



332 LIFE OF FROUDE 

copyright was Froude's, and no one could reprint 
the book in Great Britain without his consent. 
At that time there was no international copyright 
between the United Kingdom and the United 
States. A distinguished American professor, 
Mr. Eliot Norton, was invited by Mary Carlyle 
to re-edit the book beyond the Atlantic, and he 
undertook the task. Froude always thought 
that Professor Norton should have communicated 
with him, and the public will probably be 
of the same opinion. In the end, however, 
Froude voluntarily assigned the copyright to 
Mrs. Carlyle, who then had possession of the 
papers, and Mr. Norton's edition appeared in 
England, published by Macmillan, six years after 
Carlyle' s death. It proved to be very like the 
first, though some errors of the press were corrected 
and also some slips of the pen. The disputed 
memoir was not omitted, nor was anything of the 
slightest interest added by Mr. Norton to the book. 
In his Preface he attacked Froude for fulfilling 
Carlyle' s own wishes, of which he seems to have 
known little or nothing, and, by way of further 
justification for his interference, he added the 
following paragraph : 

" The first edition of the Reminiscences was so 
carelessly printed as to do grave wrong to the 
sense. The punctuation, the use of capitals and 
italics, in the manuscript, characteristic of Carlyle' s 
method of expression in print, were entirely dis- 
regarded. In the first five pages of the printed 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 333 

text there were more than a hundred and thirty 
corrections to be made of words, punctuation, 
capitals, quotation marks, and such Hke ; and 
these pages are not exceptional." 

This looks Jike a formidable indictment, and in 
the hteral sense of the words it may be true. I 
have compared the first five pages of the two 
editions, and there are a good many changes 
in the use of capitals and italics. But except 
one obvious misprint of a single letter, " even " 
for " ever," there is nothing which does " grave 
wrong " to the sense, or affects it in any 
way. " And these pages," as Mr. Norton says, 
with another meaning, '* are not exceptional." 
The later reminiscences were not easy to decipher. 
Carlyle's handwriting was seriously affected by 
age, he wrote upon both sides of very thin paper, 
and I have seen several letters of his which bear 
out Froude's assertion that, after his hand began 
to shake, " it became harder to decipher than the 
worst manuscript which I have ever examined." 
In preparing the book Froude had to use a magni- 
fying glass, and in many cases the true reading 
was a matter of opinion. In one case, however, 
it was not. Sir Henry Taylor, the most serene 
and dignified of men, found himself charged in 
Carlyle's sketch of Southey with the unpleasant 
attribute of '' morbid vivacity," and not only 
with morbid vivacity simpliciter, or per se, but 
" in all senses of that deep-reaching word." Mr. 
Norton restored the true reading, which was 



334 LIFE OF FROUDE 

" marked veracity," though, on the other hand, he 
replaced the statement, omitted by Froude, that 
Taylor, who had died between the two editions, 
was " not a well-read or wide-minded man." It 
must be admitted that in this instance Froude 
allowed a proof which made nonsense to pass, 
and that Mr. Norton did a public service by 
correcting the phrase. Froude' s occasional care- 
lessness in revision is a common failing enough. 
What made it remarkable in him was the com- 
bination of liability to these lapses with intensely 
laborious and methodical habits. 

Although Froude' s legal connection withCarlyle's 
family ceased with the assignment to Carlyle's 
niece of the copyright in the Reminiscences ^ the 
names of the two men are as inseparably associated 
as Bos well's and Johnson's, Lockhart's and Scott's, 
Macaulay's and Trevelyan's, Morley's and Glad- 
stone's. Some readers, such as Tennyson and 
Lecky, thought that Froude had revealed too 
much. Others, such as John Skelton and Edward 
FitzGerald, believed that he had raised Carlyle 
to a higher eminence than he had occupied before. 
Froude himself felt entire confidence both in the 
greatness of Carlyle's qualities and in the perma- 
nence of his fame. That was why he thought 
that the revelation of small defects would do 
more good than harm. A faultless character, 
even if he himself could have reconciled it with 
his conscience to draw one, would not have been 
accepted as genuine, would not have been treated 



FROUDE AND CARLYLE 335 

as credible. The true character, in its strength 
and its weakness, would command belief, and 
admiration too. If Froude were alive, he would 
say that the time had not yet come for a final 
judgment, and might not come for a hundred 
years. Still, I think it will be conceded that the 
twenty years which have elapsed since he accom- 
plished his task are a period of growth rather than 
decadence in the number and zeal of Carlyle's 
admirers. This is no doubt in large measure due 
to Carlyle's own books. He has been called the 
father of modern socialism, and credited with 
the destruction of political economy. I am too 
much out of sympathy with these views to judge 
them fairly. But I suppose it cannot be denied 
that Carlyle fascinates thousands who do not 
accept him as an infallible, or even as a fallible, 
guide, or that they, as well as his disciples, devour 
the pages of Froude. 

Nothing annoyed Carlyle more than to be 
told that he confounded might with right. He 
declared that, on the contrary, he had never 
said, and would never say, a word for power 
which was not founded on justice. Cromwell 
was as good as he was great, and he had never 
glorified Frederick, unless to write a book about 
a man is necessarily to glorify him. This prevalent 
misconception of Carlyle's gospel, so prevalent 
that it deceived no less keen a critic than Lecky, 
was completely dissipated by Froude. No one 
can read his Life intelligently without perceiving 



336 LIFE OF FROUDE 

that Carlyle's real foe was materialism. The 
French Revolution was to him the central fact 
of modern history, and at the same time a supreme 
judgment of Heaven upon a society given up 
to unrestrained licentiousness. Whether he was 
right or wrong is not the point. He was as far 
as possible from being, in the modern sense, 
a scientific historian. Yet in some respects he 
was utilitarian enough. The condition of England 
was to him more important than any constitu- 
tional change, any triumph in diplomacy, or 
any victory in war, and this fact explains his 
apparently inconsistent admiration of Peel, who, 
though a Parliamentary statesman, had accom- 
plished a solid achievement for the benefit of the 
people. Carlyle in his own writings is an almost 
insoluble enigma. To have given the true solution 
is the supreme merit of Froude.^ 

^ John Nichol, a name still dear in Scotland, formerly Professor 
of Literature at the University of Glasgow, who wrote on Carlyle 
for Mr. Morley's English Men of Letters in 1892, says in his preface : 
" Every critic of Carlyle must admit as constant obligation to 
Mr. Froude as every critic of Byron to Moore, or of Scott to 
Lockhart. ... I must here be allowed to express a feeling akin 
to indignation at the persistent, often virulent, attacks directed 
against a loyal friend, betrayed, it may be, by excess of faith, 
and the defective reticence that often belongs to genius, to 
publish too much about his hero. But Mr. Froude's quotation 
in defence, from the essay on Sir Walter Scott, requires no supple- 
ment : it should be remembered that he acted with the most 
ample authority ; that the restrictions under which he was first 
entrusted with the MSS. of the Reminiscences and the Letters and 
Memorials (annotated by Carlyle himself as if for publication) 
were withdrawn ; and that the initial permission to select finally 
approached a practical injunction to communicate the whole," 



CHAPTER IX 

BOOKS AND TRAVEL ' 

THE two passions of Froude's life were Devon- 
shire and the sea. " Summer has come 
at last/' he wrote to Mrs. Kingsley from Salcombe 
in the middle of September, " after two months 
of rain and storm. The fields from which the 
wrecks of the harvest were scraped up ruined 
and sprouting now lie basking in stillest sunshine, 
as if wind and rain had never been heard of. The 
coast is extremely beautiful, and I, in addition 
to the charms of the place, hear my native tongue 
spoken and sung in the churches in undiminished 
purity." Carlyle often kept him in London when 
he would much rather have been elsewhere. 
But, wherever he was, he had a ready pen, and 
his thoughts naturally clothed themselves in a 
literary garb. His enjoyment of books, especially 
old books, was intense. Reading, however, is idle 
work, and idleness was impossible to Froude. On 
his return from South Africa, where everything 
was being done which he thought least wise, he 
took up a classical subject, and began to write 
a book about Csesar. He read Cicero, Plutarch, 
Suetonius, Caesar himself, and produced early in 
(2310) 337 22 



338 LIFE OF FROUDE 

1879 3- volume which was always a particular 
favourite of his own. " I believe/' he said to 
Skelton, *' it is the best book I have ever written." 
The public did not altogether agree with him, 
and it never became so popular as Short Studies. 
Yet it is undoubtedly a brilliant performance, 
with just the qualities which might have been 
expected to make it popular, and a second edition 
was soon required. It is interesting from the 
first page to the last, and its whole object is to 
show that the Roman world in the last days of 
the Republic was very like the English world 
under Queen Victoria. In Rome itself it has 
a steady sale. The general reader, however, 
was not wrong in thinking that these eloquent 
pages are below the level of Froude at his best. 
There is a hard metallic glitter in the style, and 
a forced comparison of ancient with modern 
things not really parallel, which make the whole 
narrative artificial and unreal. Lord Dufferin 
said, with his natural acuteness, " It is interesting, 
and forcibly written, but one feels he is not a safe 
guide. As they say of the mansions of Ireland, 
* they are always within a hundred yards of the 
best situation,' so one feels that Froude is never 
quite in the bull's-eye in the view he gives."^ 

Those who criticised the book as if it were a 
formal and historical narrative showed a lack of 
humour, which is a sense of proportion. Macaulay 
might almost as well be judged by his Fragment of 

^ Lyall's Life of Dufferin, vol. ii. p. 244. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 339 

a Roman Tale. Froude himself calls his CcBsar a 
sketch, and it is scarcely more authoritative than 
the pamphlet of Louis Napoleon on the same 
subject. On the other hand, it is quite untrue 
that Froude ];iad not read Cicero's letters. He 
had read those which bore upon his subject, and 
he quotes them freely enough. The fault of his 
Ccesar is that he makes a wrong start. Points of 
resemblance between the first century before the 
Christian era and the nineteenth century after it 
may of course be found. But the differences are 
essential and fundamental. A society which rests 
upon servitude cannot be like a society which 
rests upon freedom. Christianity has modified 
the whole lives of those who do not profess it, 
and has created a totally new atmosphere, even 
if it be not in all respects a better one. Repre- 
sentative government, whether it be a good thing 
or a bad thing, is at least a thing which counts. 
Cassar could hardly have understood the idea of 
an indissoluble marriage, of a limited monarchy, 
of equality before the law. 

One strange similitude Froude did, in deference 
to outraged susceptibilities, omit, and only the 
first edition contains a formal comparison of 
Julius Caesar with Jesus Christ. No irreverence 
was intended. It was Froude' s enthusiasm for 
Caesar that carried, him away. Still, the instance 
is only an extreme form of what comes from push- 
ing parallels below the surface. It is only a shade 
less misleading, though many shades less startling. 



340 LIFE OF FROUDE 

to represent Caesar as a virtuous philanthropist of 
abstemious habits who perished in a magnanimous 
effort to rescue the people from the tyranny of the 
nobles. The people in the modern sense were 
slaves, and the Republic at least ensured that 
there should be some protection against military 
despotism, to which in due course its abolition led. 
That Caesar was intellectually among the greatest 
men of all time is beyond question. Both as 
strategist and as historian he is supreme. His 
" thrasonical boast " was sober truth, and he 
stands above military or literary criticism, a lesson 
and a model. But he was steeped in all the vices 
of his age, and his motive was personal ambition. 
The Republic did not give him sufficient scope, 
and therefore he would have destroyed it, if he had 
not been himself destroyed. 

Froude adopted the position of a great German 
professor and historian, Theodor Mommsen, whose 
prejudices were as strong as his learning was 
profound. He went with Mommsen in adoration 
of Csesar, and in depreciation of Cicero. That 
Cicero used one sort of language in public speeches, 
and another sort in private correspondence, is 
true, and is notorious because some of his most 
intimate letters have been preserved. But it is 
not peculiar to him. The man who talked in 
public as he talked in private would have small 
sense of fitness. The man who talked in private 
as he talked in public would have small sense of 
humour. Although Cicero's humour was not 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 341 

brilliant, he had sufficient taste to preserve him 
from pedantry and from solecisms. His devotion 
to the Republic was perfectly sincere ; and if he 
changed in his behaviour to Caesar, it was because 
Caesar changed in his behaviour to the Republic. 
Froude's specific charge of rapid tergiversation 
is disproved by dates. The speech for Marcellus, 
with its over-strained flattery of the conqueror, 
was delivered, not " within a few weeks of his 
murder," but eighteen months before that event, 
at a time when Cicero still hoped that Caesar 
would be moderate. If Cicero's Republic was a 
narrow oligarchy, it was also the only form of 
constitutional and civilian government which he 
knew or could imagine. He failed to preserve 
it. He was murdered like Caesar himself. Neither 
of them believed that political assassination was 
a crime. Cicero's only regret was that Antony 
had not been killed with Caesar. Antony's chief 
desire, which he accomplished, was to kill Cicero. 
The idea that Cicero was a mere declaimer, who 
did not count, never occurred either to Caesar 
or to Antony. It was left for Professor Mommsen 
to discover. Froude, always on the look-out for 
examples of his theory, or his father's theory, that 
orators must be useless and mistaken, seized it 
with an eager grasp. An agreeable looseness of 
treatment pervades 'the book, and "patricians" 
appear as wealthy leaders of fashionable society, 
being in fact a small number of old Roman families, 
who might be poor, or in trade, and could not 



342 LIFE OF FROUDE 

legally under the Republic be increased in number, 
resembling rather a Hindu caste than any institu- 
tion of Western Christendom. In Caesar's time 
they had almost died out, and the aristocracy of 
the day was an aristocracy of office. The book, 
however, though far from faultless, though in 
some respects misleading, has a singular fascina- 
tion, the charm of a picture drawn by the hand 
of a master with consummate skill. As an 
historical study, what the French call une etude, it 
deserves a very high place, and it contains one 
sentence which all democrats would do well to learn: 

** Popular forms are possible only when indi- 
vidual men can govern their own lives on moral 
principles, and when duty is of more importance 
than pleasure, and justice than material expe- 
diency." 

That represents the best side of Carlyle's teach- 
ing ; the subordination of material objects, the 
supremacy of the moral law. 

Carlyle, however, did not care for the book, as 
appears in the following letter from Froude to 
Lady Derby: 

" April 26th, 1879. — You are a most kind 
critic. If I have succeeded in creating interest 
in so old a subject my utmost wishes are ac- 
complished. I am very curious indeed to hear 
what Lord D. says. I can guess that he thinks 
I ought to have said more in defence of the 
Constitutionalists, and that I have hardly used 
Cicero. Carlyle reduced me to the condition of 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 343 

a 'drenched hen' — to use one of his own images. 
He told me that the book was not clear, that 
* he got no good of it ' — in fact, that it was * a 
failure.' It may be a failure, but 'want of clear- 
ness' is certainly not the cause. I fancy he 
wanted something else which he did not find, 
and he would not give himself the trouble to 
examine what he did find." 

Froude contributed in 1880 to Mr. Morley's 
English Men of Letters a critical and biographical 
sketch of Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress, as 
the work of a Dissenter, had been excluded from 
the Rectory at Dartington. But Froude was 
not long in supplying the deficiency for himself, 
and his Hterary appreciation of Bunyan' s style 
was accompanied by a sincere sympathy with 
the Puritan part of his faith. All rehgious people, 
he thought, might find common ground in Bunyan, 
a man who lived for religion, and for nothing else. 
Yet even here Froude' s Erastianism, and respect 
for authority, come into play. He gravely de- 
fends Bunyan's imprisonment in Bedford gaol, 
which lasted, with some intermissions, from 1660 
to 1672, as necessary to enforce respect for the 
law. That such a man as Charles Stuart should 
have had power to punish such a man as John 
Bunyan for preaching the word of God is a 
strange comment on the nature of a Christian 
country. But it' cannot be denied that Charles 
and his judges. Sir Matthew Hale among them, 
provided the leisure to which we owe the best 



344 LIFE OF FROUDE 

religious allegories in the language. Nor can it be 
said that Froude's apology for the confinement of 
Bunyan is so repugnant to reason and justice 
as Gibbon's apology for the martyrdom of Cyprian. 

The General Election of 1880 was regarded by 
Froude with mixed feelings. 

" I am glad/' he wrote to Lady Derby on the 
gth of April, 1880, " that there is to be an end 
of ' glory and gunpowder,' but my feelings about 
Gladstone remain where they were. When you 
came into power in 1874, I dreamed of a revival 
of real Conservatism which under wiser guiding 
might and would have lasted to the end of the 
century. This is gone — gone for ever. The old 
England of order and rational government is past 
and will not return. Now I should like to see a 
moderate triumvirate — Lord Hartington, Lord 
Granville, and your husband, with a Cabinet 
which they could control. This too may easily be 
among the impossibilities, but I am sure that at the 
bottom of its heart the country wants quiet, and a 
Liberal revolutionary sensationalism will be just 
as distasteful to reasonable people as ' Asian 
Mysteries,' tall talk, and ambitious buffooneries." 

Lord Derby became more and more Liberal, 
until in December, 1882, he joined Mr. Gladstone's 
Cabinet. Before that decisive step, however, it be- 
came evident in which direction he was tending, and 
Froude wrote to Lady Derby on the 5th of March : 

" I will call on Tuesday about 5. I have not 
been out of town, but my afternoons have been 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 345 

taken up with a multitude of small engagements, 
and indeed I have been sulky too, and imagined 
Lord D. had delivered himself over to the enemy. 
But what right have I to say anything when I 
am going this evening to dine with Chamberlain ? 
I like ChambeVlain. He knows his mind. There 
is no dust in his eyes, and he throws no dust in 
the eyes of others." 

Of the great struggle between Lords and Com- 
mons over the franchise in 1884, Froude wrote to 
the same correspondent on the 31st of July : 

"As to what has happened since I went away, 
I for my own humble part am heartily pleased, 
for it will clear the air. If we are to have de- 
mocracy, as I suppose we are, let us go into it 
with our eyes open. I don't like drifting among 
cataracts, hiding the reality from ourselves by 
forms which are not allowed either sense or power. 
That I suppose to be Lord Salisbury's feeling. I 
greatly admired his speech in Cannon Street, which 
reminded me of a talk I had with him long ago at 
Hatfield. If the result is a change in the Consti- 
tution of the House of I,ords which will make it 
a real power, no one will be more sorry than 
Chamberlain, whose own wish is to keep it in the 
condition of ornamental helplessness. Lord Derby 
himself can hardly wish to see the country entirely 
in the hands of a single irresponsible Chamber 
elected by universal suffrage — and of such a 
Chamber, which each extension of the suffrage 
brings to a lower intellectual level." 



346 LIFE OF FROUDE 

The following letter was written from Salcombe 
just after the General Election of 1886 and the 
defeat of Home Rule : 

" A Devonshire farmer fell ill of typhus fever 
once. He had quarrelled with a neighbour, and 
the clergyman told him that he must not die out 
of charity, and must see the man and shake hands 
with him. He agreed. The man came. They 
were reconciled, and he was goiug away again 
when the sick farmer called him hack to the bed- 
side. * Mind you,' he said, * if so be as I get 
over this here. His to he as 'twas.' 

" I am sorry to see we are taking for granted 
that we have got over the scare, and that ' 'tis to 
be as 'twas ' in Parliament. If no way can be 
found of giving effect to the feeling of the country 
which has been just expressed, the old enemy 
will be back again stronger than ever. I, for my 
small part, shall finally despair of Parliamentary 
Government, and shall pray for a Chamberlain 
Dictatorship. I do not think politicians know 
how slight, the respect which is now generally felt 
for Parliament, or how weary sensible people have 
grown of it and its factions. 

" We are very happy down here. We have 
lost the Molt, but have a very tolerable substitute 
for it. The Halifaxes are at the Molt themselves, 
and CO isidering what I am, and that he is the 
President of the Church Union, I think he and 
I are 00th astonished to find how well we get 
on together. The Colonists come next week to 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 347 

Plymouth. I have promised to meet them. Their 
dinner will be the exact anniversary of the arrival 
of the Armada off the harbour. That was the be- 
ginning of the English naval greatness and of the 
English Colopiial Empire. Think of poor Oceana — 
75,000 copies of it sold. It stands for something 
that the English nation is interested in. . . . But 
I must not try your eyes any further." 

It was in 1 88 1 that Froude, whose connection 
with Fraser had ceased, wrote for Good Words 
the series of papers on The Oxford Counter- 
Reformation which are the best record hitherto 
published of his college life.^ I have already 
referred to the vivid picture of John Henry 
Newman contained in one of them. On the 2nd 
of March, 1881, the aged Cardinal, writing from 
the Birrriingham Oratory, sent a gracious message 
of acknowledgment. *' My dear Anthony Froude,*' 
he began, " I have seen some portions of what 
you have been writing about me, and I cannot 
help sending you a line to thank you. ... I 
thank you, not as being able to accept all you 
have said in praise of me. Of course I can't. Nor 
again as if there may not be other aspects of me 
which you cannot praise, and which you may in 
a coming chapter of your publication find it a 
duty, whether I allow them or not, to remark 
upon. But I write to thank you for such an 
evidence of your affectionate feelings towards 
me, for which I was not prepared, and which has 

' Short Studies, fourth series, pp. 192-206. 



348 LIFE OF FROUDE 

touched me very much. May God's fullest bless- 
ings be upon you, and give you all good. Yours 
affectionately, John H. Cardinal Newman." 

Froude carefully kept this letter, and, remote as 
their opinions were, he never varied in his loyal 
admiration of the illustrious Oratorian. That 
admiration, however, was purely personal, and 
did not affect in any degree the staunchness 
of Froude' s principles. In 1883 Protestant 
Germany celebrated the four hundredth anni- 
versary of Luther's birth, and Froude wrote for 
the occasion a short biography of the rebellious 
monk who changed the history of the world. 
Founded on the larger Life by Julius Koesthn, 
which had then just appeared, this little book 
makes no pretence to original learning or research. 
It is a polemical pamphlet by a master of English, 
and a fervent admirer of the illustrious Martin. 
* ' When the German states revolted against the 
Roman hierarchy," says Froude in his Preface, 
"we in England revolted also," and Luther's 
name was ^s familiar as Bunyan's to the Protestant 
Churches of England. The Catholic revival of 
which Froude had seen so much at Oxford was 
still in full swing. 

" Nevertheless, we are still a Protestant nation, 
and the majority of us intend to remain Protestant. 
If we are indifferent to our Smithfield and Oxford 
martyrs, we are not indifferent to the Reformation, 
and we can join with Germany in paying respect 
to the memory of a man to whom we also, in part, 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 349 

owe our deliverance. Without Luther there would 
have been either no change in England in the 
sixteenth century, or a change purely political. 
Luther's was one of those great individualities 
which have riiodelled the history of mankind, and 
modelled it entirely for good. He revived and 
maintained the spirit of piety and reverence 
in which, and by which alone, real progress is 
possible." 

Such was the temper in which Froude set 
about his task, and which made it a labour of 
love. Besides the great public events in Luther's 
career which are familiar to all, he gave a charming 
picture of the affectionate father, the genial 
host, the eloquent, humourous talker whose 
fragments of conversation, his Tischreden, are 
in Germany almost as popular as his hymns. 
Luther's dominant quality was force, and that 
was a quality which Froude, like Carlyle, honoured 
above all others. Luther was not in all respects 
like a modern Protestant. He had a great respect 
for authority, when it was genuine, and he believed 
in transubstantiation, which Leo X. regarded 
as a juggle to deceive the vulgar. If Luther's 
appearance before the Diet of Worms was, as 
Froude says, '' the finest scene in human history,'* 
it is so because this solitary monk stood not 
for one form of religion against another, but 
for truth against falsehood, for earnest belief 
in divine things against a Church governed 
by unbelievers. The Renaissance in its most 



350 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Pagan form had invaded the Vatican, and the 
Vicar of Christ appeared to Luther as Anti- 
Christ himself. If Charles V. had been Pope, 
and Leo X. had been emperor, we might never 
have heard of Luther. Froude sincerely respected 
Charles V., and held that Protestant historians 
had done him less than justice. Although Charles 
opposed the Reformation, he opposed it honestly, 
and his faith in his own religion was absolute. He 
was a Christian gentleman. As he entered Witten- 
berg after the battle of Mahlberg, some bishop 
asked him to dig up Luther's body and burn 
it. "I war not with the dead," he replied, 
perhaps remembering the grand old Roman line 

Nullum cum victis certamen, et aethere cassis. 

One valuable truth Froude had learned not 
from Carlyle, but from study of the past, and 
from his own observation at the Cape. " If," 
he wrote in CcBsar, " there be one lesson which 
history clearly teaches, it is this, that free nations 
cannot govern subject provinces. If they are 
unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies 
to share their constitution, the constitution itself 
will fall in pieces from mere incompetence for 
its duties." A critic in The Quarterly Review 
expressed a hope that this would not prove to 
be true of India. But Froude was not thinking of 
India. He had in his mind the self-governing 
Colonies, whose fortunes and future were to 
him a source of perpetual interest. He loved 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 351 

travel, and as soon as he had shaken off the 
burden of Carlyle he took a voyage round the 
world, described, not always with topical accuracy, 
in Oceana. The name of this delightful volume 
is of course taken from Harrington, More's suc- 
cessor in the days of the Commonwealth. The 
contents were a characteristic mixture of history, 
speculation, and personal experience. Froude 
had a fixed idea that English politicians, especially 
Liberal politicians, wanted to get rid of the 
Colonies. Else why had they withdrawn British 
troops from Canada and New Zealand ? He 
could not see, perhaps they did not all see them- 
selves, that to give the Colonies complete freedom, 
and to insist upon their providing, except so far 
as the Navy was concerned, for their own defence, 
would strengthen, not weaken, the tie. In proof 
of his theory he produced some singular evidence, 
comprising one of the strangest stories that ever 
was told. He heard it, so he informs us, from Sir 
Arthur Helps, and reproduces it in his own words. 
" A Government had gone out ; Lord Palmer- 
ston was forming a new Ministry, and in a pre- 
liminary Council was arranging the composition 
of it. He had filled up the other places. He was 
at a loss for a Colonial Secretary. This name 
and that was suggested, and thrown aside. At 
last he said, * I su'ppose I must take the thing 
myself. Come upstairs with me. Helps, when 
the Council is over. We will look at the maps, 
and you shall show me where these places are.' " 



352 LIFE OF FROUDE 

If Froude's memory of this anecdote be accurate. 
Helps must, for once, have been drawing upon 
his imagination. As Clerk of the Council, he 
had no more to do with forming Cabinets than 
with appointing bishops. Palmerston was never 
Colonial Secretary in his life; and among his 
faults as a Minister, which were positive rather 
than negative, ignorance of political geography 
was certainly not included. Many people, how- 
ever, especially the Tariff Reform League, will 
consider that the passage which immediately 
succeeds proves Froude to have been in advance of 
his age. For he argues that trade follows the 
flag, because " our colonists take three times as 
much of our productions in proportion to their 
number as foreigners take." A tour through the 
Colonies for the purpose of conversing with their 
most influential statesmen had long been one of 
his cherished plans. Hitherto he had got no 
farther than the Cape, where, as we have seen, 
he became entangled in South African politics, 
and had to repeat his visit. Now he was bound 
for Australasia, and on the 6th of December, 1884, 
he left Tilbury Docks, with his son Ashley, in an 
Aberdeen packet of four thousand tons. His love 
of the sea, Elizabethan in its intensity, was 
heightened by his enjoyment of Greek literature, 
especially the Odyssey, which he considered ideal 
reading for a ship, and, as it surely is, on ship or 
on shore, an incomparable tale of adventure. 

Before the end of the year Froude was at Cape 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 353 

Town, renewing his acquaintance with familiar 
scenes. Many of his former friends were dead, 
and his courteous enemy, now Sir John Molteno, 
had left Cape Town as well as public life. The 
Prime Minister was Mr. Upington, a clever 
lawyer, afterwards Sir Thomas Upington, and the 
chief topic was Sir Charles Warren's expedition 
to Bechuanaland, which happily did not end in 
war, as Upington apprehended that it would. Sir 
Hercules Robinson was Governor and High Com- 
missioner, a man after Froude's heart, "too upright 
to belong to any party," and thoroughly apprecia- 
tive of all that was best in the Boers. This time 
Froude's stay was a short one, and early in 1885 he 
was at Melbourne. Here the burning question was 
the German occupation of New Guinea, for which 
Colonial opinion held Gladstone's Government, 
and Lord Derby in particular, responsible. On 
the other hand. Lord Derby had suggested 
Australian Federation, which received a good deal 
of support, though it led to nothing at the time. 
On one point Froude seems always to have met 
with sympathy. Abuse of Gladstone never failed 
to elicit a favourable response, and the news of 
Gordon's death was an opportunity not to be 
wasted. But when there came rumours of 
a possible war with Russia over the Afghan 
frontier, Froude topk the side of Russia, or at all 
events of peace, and contended with his Tory 
companion. Lord Elphinstone, who was for war. 
In New Zealand he visited the venerable Sir 
(2310) 23 



354 LIFE OF FROUDE 

George Grey, who had violated all precedent by 
entering local politics, and becoming Prime 
Minister, after the Duke of Buckingham had 
recalled him from the Governorship of the Colony. 
He was not equally successful in his second 
career, and Froude's unqualified praise of him 
was resented by many New Zealanders. That 
the Colonies would be true to the mother country 
if the mother country were true to them was 
the safe if somewhat vague conclusion at which 
the returning traveller arrived. He came home 
by America, and met with a more formidable 
antagonist than his old assailant Father Burke, 
in the shape of a terrific blizzard. 

But hardships had no deterring effect upon 
Froude, and his love of travel, like his love of the 
classics, suffered no diminution while strength 
remained. He returned from the Antipodes early 
in 1885. Before 1886 was out he had started on 
a voyage to the West Indies, so that his survey 
of our Colonial possessions might be complete. 
Ardent imperialist as he was, Froude was not less 
fully alive than Mr. Goldwin Smith to the diffi- 
culties inherent in a policy of Imperial Federation. 
" All of us are united at present," he had written 
in Oceana^ " by the invisible bonds of relationship 
and of affection for our common country, for our 
common sovereign, and for our joint spiritual 
inheritance. These links are growing, and if let 
alone will continue to grow, and the free fibres 

\v- 393. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 355 

will of themselves become a rope of steel. A 
federation contrived by politicians would snap at 
the first strain." Australian Federation, which 
Froude did not live to see, was no contrivance 
of politicians, l^ut the result of spontaneous opinion 
generated in Australia, and ratified as a matter 
of course by Parliament at home. 

The West Indian Islands had an especial fascina- 
tion for Froude Ton account of the great naval 
exploits of Rodney, Hood, and other British 
sailors. ■ Kingsley's At Last had revived his in- 
terest in them ; and though Kingsley had long been 
dead, his memory was fresh among all who knew 
him. The diary which Froude kept during this 
journey has been preserved, and I am enabled 
to make a few extracts from it. On the last day 
of 1886, while he was crossing the Bay of Biscay, 
he meditated upon the subject which occupied 
Cicero at an earlier period of his life. " Last day 
of the year. One more gone of the few which can 
now remain to me. Old age is not what I looked 
for. It is much pleasanter. Physically, except 
that I cannot run, or jump, or dance, I do not 
feel much difference, and I don't want to do those 
things. Spirits are better. Life itself has less 
worries with it, and seems prettier and truer 
to me now that I can look at it objectively, without 
hopes and anxieties on my own account. I have 
nothing to expect in this world in the way of good. 
It has given me all that it will or can. I am 
less liable to illusions. One knows by experience 



356 LIFE OF FROUDE 

that nothing is so good or so bad as one has 
fancied, and that what is to be will be mainly 
what has been. So many of one's friends are 
dead ! Yes, but one will soon die too. Each 
friend gone is the cutting a link which would have 
made death painful. It loses its terror as it draws 
nearer, especially when one thinks what it would 
be if one were not allowed to die." Tennyson has 
expressed in Tithonus the idea at which Froude 
glances, and from which he averts his gaze. 
Carlyle's senility was not enviable, and even that 
sturdy veteran Stratford Canning ^ told Gladstone 
that longevity was " not a blessing." Like 
Cephalus at the opening of Plato's Republic, Froude 
found that he could see more clearly when the 
mists of sentiment were dispersed. 

While at sea Froude pursued his favourite 
musings on the worthlessness of all orators, from 
Demosthenes and Cicero to Burke and Fox, from 
Burke and Fox to Gladstone and Bright. The 
world was conveniently divided into talking men 
and acting men. Gladstone had never done any- 
thing. He had always talked. 

" I wonder whether people will ever open their 
eyes about all this. The orators go in for virtue, 
freedom, etc., the cheap cant which will charm 
the constituencies. They are generous with what 
costs them nothing — Irish land, religious liberty, 
emancipation of niggers — sacrificing the depen- 
dencies to tickle the vanity of an English mob 

' Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 357 

and catch the praises of the newspapers. If ever 
the tide turns, surely the first step will be to 
hang the great misleaders of the people — as the 
pirates used to be — along the House of Commons 
terrace by th^ river as a sign to mankind, and 
send the rest for ever back into silence and im- 
potence." 

Whether a man be a pirate is a matter of fact. 
Whether he be a misleader of the people is a 
matter of opinion. " Whom shall we hang ? " 
would become a party question, and perhaps a 
general amnesty for mere debaters is the most 
practical solution of the problem. 

Barbados, which has since suffered severely 
from the want of a market for its sugar, seemed 
to Froude's eyes to present in a sort of comic 
picture the summit of human felicity. '' Swarms 
of niggers on board — delightful fat woman in 
blue calico with a sailor straw hat, and a pipe 
in her mouth. All of them perfectly happy, 
without a notion of morality — piously given 
too — psalm-singing, doing all they please without 
scruple, rarely married, for easiness of parting, 
looking as if they never knew a care. . . . 
Nigger dom perfect happiness. Schopenhauer 
should come here." Schopenhauer would perhaps 
have said that " niggers " were happier than 
other men because they come nearer to the 
beasts. 

As Froude has been accused of injustice to the 
Church of Rome, it may be as well to quote an 



358 LIFE OF FROUDE 

entry from his journal at Trinidad : ^ " Went to 
Roman Catholic Cathedral — saw a few coloured 
men and women on their knees at solitary prayers 
—much better for them than Methodist addresses 
on salvation." 

In another place he says : ^ ** Religion as a 
motive alters the aspect of everything — so much 
of the world rescued from Rome and the great 
enemy. Yet the Roman Church after all is some- 
thing. It is a cause and a home everywhere — 
something to care for outside oneself — an interest 
— something which does not change." 

Again at Barbados, on the 17th of February, 
he writes : " By far the most prosperous of the 
upper classes that I have seen in the islands 
are the Roman Catholic priests and bishops. 
They stand, step, and speak out with as fine a 
consciousness of power as in Ireland itself. . . . 
Large, authoritative, dignified, with their long 
sweeping robes. The old thing is getting fast 
on its feet again. The philosophers and critics 
have done for Protestantism as a positive, manly, 
and intellectually credible explanation of the 
world. The old organism and old superstition 
steps into its ancient dominion — finding it swept 
and garnished." 

In San Domingo at sunrise Fronde's medi- 
tations were far from cheerful : " The sense of 
natural beauty is nothing where man is degraded." 
So far Bishop Heber in a well-known couplet. 

' January 15th, 1887. ^ February ist. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 359 

Froude proceeds : " The perception of beauty 
is the perception of something which is acting 
upon and elevating the intellectual nature. . . . 
It is connected with hope, connected with the 
consciousness ^ of the noble element in the 
human soul ; and where it is unperceived, or 
where there is none to perceive it, or where it 
falls dead, and fails in its effect, the solitary eye 
which gazes will find no pleasure, no joy — only 
distress — as for something calling to him out of a 
visionary world from which his own race is shut 
out. We cannot feel healthily alone. The sense 
of worship, the sense of beauty, the sense of sight, 
is only alive and keen when shared by others. . . . 
It is something not alone, but generated by the 
action of the object on the soul. Thus in these 
islands there is only sadness. In New Zealand 
there was hope and life." 

A passage from the diary concerning the 
appointment of Colonial Governors will be regarded 
by all official persons as obsolete. 

" The English nation, if they wish to keep the 
Colonies, ought to insist on proper men being 
chosen as Governors. . . . The Colonial Office 
is not to blame and will only be grateful for an 
expression of opinion which will enable them to 
answer pressure upon them with a peremptory 
* Impossible' Court influence, party influence, 
party convenience, all equally injurious. A noble 
lord is out at elbows ; give him a Governorship of 
a Colony. A party politician must be disappointed 



36o LIFE OF FROUDE 

in arrangements at home ; console him with a 
Colony. The Colonists feel that no respect is 
felt for them ; anybody will do for a Colony ; 
and whether it is a Crown Colony, or a Colony 
with responsible government of its own, the effect 
is equally mischievous. In fact, while they 
continue hable, and occasionally subject, to treat- 
ment of this kind, the feelings insensibly generate 
which will lead in the end to separation." 

The immediate consequence of Froude's West 
Indian travels was his well-known book The 
English in the West Indies, to which he gave as 
a second title, one that he himself preferred, 
The Bow of Ulysses. It was illustrated from 
his own sketches, for he had inherited that 
gift from his father. Being often controversial 
in tone, and not always accurate in description, 
it provoked numerous criticisms, though not of 
the sort which interfere with success. In every- 
thing Froude wrote, though least of all in his 
History, allowance has to be made for the 
personal equation. He had not Carlyle's memory, 
nor his unfailing accuracy of eye. Where he 
wrote from mere recollection, deserting the safe 
ground of his diary, he was liable to error, and 
few men of letters have been less capable of 
producing a trustworthy guide book. The value 
of Oceana and The Bow of Ulysses is alto- 
gether different. They are the characteristic 
reflections of an intensely vivid, highly culti- 
vated mind, bringing out of its treasure-house 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 361 

things new and old. " The King knows your 
book," it was said to Montaigne, " and would 
Hke to know you." " If the King knows my 
book," repHed the philosopher, *' he knows me." 
Froude is i^ his books, especially in his books 
of travel, for in [them, more than anywhere 
else, he thinks aloud. There are strange people 
in the world. One of them criticised Froude in 
an obituary notice because, when he went to 
Jamaica, he sat in the shade reading Dante while 
he might have been studying the Jamaican 
Constitution. There may be those who would 
study the Jamaican Constitution, what there 
is of it, in the sun, while they might, if they 
could, read Dante in the shade, and the necrologist 
in question may be one of them. Froude did 
not go to study Constitutions, which he could 
have studied at home. He went to see for 
himself what the West Indian Colonies were like, 
and his incorrigible habit of reading the best 
literature did not forsake him even in tropical 
climates. He cared only too little for Con- 
stitutions even when they were his proper business, 
as they certainly were not in Jamaica. The 
object of The English in the West Indies is to make 
people at home feel an interest in their West Indian 
fellow-subjects, and that it did by the mere fact 
of its circulation.' His behef that the West Indies 
should be governed, like the East Indies, des- 
potically, is a subsidiary matter, and the quaint 
parody of the Athanasian Creed in which he 



362 LIFE OF FROUDE 

epitomised what he supposed to be the Radical 
faith is merely an intellectual amusement. On 
the virtues of Rodney, and the future of the 
Colonies, he is serious, though scarcely practical. 

" Imperial Federation," he wrote in 1887, " is 
far away, if ever it is to be realised at all. If 
it is to come it will come of itself, brought about 
by circumstances and silent impulses working 
continuously through many years unseen and 
unspoken of. It is conceivable that Great Britain 
and her scattered offspring, under the pressure of 
danger from without, or impelled by some general 
purpose, might agree to place themselves under 
a single administrative head. It is conceivable 
that out of a combination so formed, if it led to 
a successful immediate result, some union of a 
closer kind might eventually emerge. It is not 
only conceivable, but it is entirely certain, that 
attempts made when no such occasion has arisen, 
by politicians ambitious of distinguishing them- 
selves, will fail, and in failing will make the object 
that is aimed at more confessedly unattainable 
than it is now." ^ 

So far Froude's predictions have been realised. 
When he wrote, the Imperial Federation League 
had just been formed, and Lord Rosebery was 
arguing for Irish Home Rule as part of a much 
wider scheme. Except Australia, which is homo- 
geneous, like the Dominion of Canada, the British 
Empire is no nearer Federation, and Ireland is 

' English in the West Indies, p. i68. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 363 

no nearer Home Rule, than they were then. 
The depression of the sugar trade in the West 
Indian Islands has been met by a treaty which 
raises the price of sugar at home, and makes those 
Colonies proportionately unpopular with the work- 
ing classes. It has since been proposed to 
carry the principle farther, and tax the British 
workman for the benefit of Colonial manu- 
facturers. For these strange results of imperial 
thinking neither Froude nor any of his con- 
temporaries were prepared. But they correspond 
accurately, especially the second of them, with the 
" attempt made by politicians ambitious of dis- 
tinguishing themselves," against which Froude 
warned his countrymen. Froude was no scientific 
economist. He believed in " free trade within 
the Empire," which is not free trade. He 
was for an imperial tariff, a thing made in 
Germany, and called a Zollverein. But his 
practical experience and personal observation 
taught him that proposals for closer union 
with the Colonies must come from the Colonies 
themselves. The negroes were a difficulty. They 
were not really fit for self-government, as the 
statesmen of the American Union had found. 
Personal freedom, the inalienable right of all men 
and all women, is a very different thing from the 
possession of a "vote. As for India, the idea of 
Home Rule there had receded a long way into 
the distance since the sanguine predictions of 
Macaulay. Perhaps Froude never quite worked 



364 LIFE OF FROUDE 

out his conceptions of the federal system which he 
would have liked to see. In Australia it would 
have been plain sailing. In Canada it was already 
established. In South Africa it would have 
embodied the union of British with Dutch, and 
prevented the disasters which have since occurred. 
In the West Indies it would have raised problems 
of race and colour which are more prudently 
agitated at a greater distance from the Black 
Republic of Hayti. Imperial Federalists have 
not yet explained what they would do with 
India. 

Froude neither was nor aimed at being a 
practical politican. His object, in which he 
succeeded, was to kindle in the public mind at 
home that imaginative enthusiasm for the Colonial 
idea of which his own heart was full. Although 
the measure of Colonial loyalty was given after- 
wards in the South African War, the despatch 
of troops from Sydney to the Soudan in 1885 
showed that ties of sentiment are the strongest 
of all. It was those ties, rather than any political 
or commercial bond, which Froude desired to 
strengthen. No one would have liked less to 
live in a Colony. Colonial society did not suit 
him. Colonial manners were not to his mind. 
But to meet governing men, like Sir Henry 
Norman, a " warm Gladstonian," by the way, 
was always a pleasure to him, and as a symbol 
of England's greatness he loved her territory 
beyond the seas. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 365 

The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, published in 1889, 
was Froude's one mature and serious attempt 
at a novel. For distinction of style and beauty 
of thought it may be compared with the greatest 
of historical romances. If it was the least suc- 
cessful of his books, the failure can be assigned 
to the absence of women, or at least of love, 
which ever since Dr. Johnson's definition, if not 
before, has been expected in a novel. The scene 
is laid in the neighbourhood of his favourite 
Derreen, and the period is the middle of the 
eighteenth century. The real hero is an English 
Protestant, Colonel Goring. Goring '' belonged 
to an order of men who, if they had been allowed 
fair play, would have made the sorrows of Ireland 
the memory of an evil dream ; but he had come 
too late, the spirit of the Cromwellians had died 
out of the land, and was not to be revived by 
a single enthusiast." He was murdered, and 
Froude could point his favourite moral that 
the woes of the sister country would be healed 
by the appearance of another Cromwell, which 
he had to admit was improbable. The Irish 
hero, Morty Sullivan, has been in France, and 
is ready to fight for the Pretender. He did no 
good. Few Irishmen, in Froude's opinion, ever 
did any good. But in The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, 
if anywhere, Fi'oude shows his sympathy with 
the softness of the Irish character, and Morty's 
meditations on his return from France are ex- 
pressed as only Froude could express them. Morty 



366 LIFE OF FROUDE 

was walking with his sister by the estuary of the 
Kenmare River opposite Derrynane, afterwards 
famous as the residence of Daniel O'Connell. 
" For how many ages had the bay and the rocks 
and the mountains looked exactly the same 
as they were looking then ? How many genera- 
tions had played their part on the same stage, 
eager and impassioned as if it had been erected 
only for them ! The half-naked fishermen of 
forgotten centuries who had earned a scanty 
living there ; the monks from the Skelligs who 
had come in on high days in their coracles to 
say mass for them, baptize the children, or bury 
the dead ; the Celtic chief, with saffron shirt 
and battle-axe, driven from his richer lands by 
Norman or Saxon invaders, and keeping hold 
in this remote spot on his ragged independence ; 
the Scandinavian pirates, the overflow of the 
Northern Fiords, looking for new soil where 
they could take root. These had all played 
their brief parts there and were gone, and as many 
more would follow in the cycles of the years 
that were to come, yet the scene itself was un- 
changed and would not change. The same soil 
had fed those that were departed, and would feed 
those that were to be. The same landscape 
had affected their imaginations with its beauty 
or awed them with its splendours ; and each 
alike had yielded to the same delusion that the 
valley was theirs and was inseparably connected 
with themselves and their fortunes. Morty's 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 367 

career had been a stormy one. ... He had gone 
out into the world, and had battled and struggled 
in the holy cause, yet the cause was not advanced, 
and it was all nothing. He was about to leave 
the old plaqe, probably for ever. Yet there it 
was, tranquil, calm, indifferent whether he came 
or went. What was he ? What was any one ? 
To what purpose the ineffectual strivings of 
short-lived humanity ? Man's life was but the 
shadow of a dream, and his work was but the 
heaping of sand which the next tide would level 
flat again." 

Wordsworth's " pathetic fallacy " that the 
moods of nature correspond with the moods of 
man has seldom found such eloquent illustration 
as in Morty's vain imaginings. Morty himself 
was shot dead by English soldiers in revenge for 
the murder of Goring. The story is a dismal 
and tragic one. But the best qualities of the 
Irish race are there, depicted with true sympathy, 
and perhaps this volume may be held to confirm 
Carlyle's opinion, expressed in a letter to Miss 
Davenport Bromley, that even The English in 
Ireland was " more disgraceful to the English 
Government by far than to the Irish savageries." 
Froude, indeed, never forgot the kindness of the 
Kerry peasants who nursed him through the small- 
pox. He would have done an5rthing for the Irish, 
except allow them to govern themselves. 

In 1890 Froude contributed to the series of 
The Queen's Prime Ministers^ edited by Mr. Stuart 



368 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Reid, a biographical study of Lord Beaconsfield. 
He wrote to Mr. Reid on the subject : 

"... Lord Beaconsfield wore a mask to the 
generality of mankind. It was only when I read 
Lothaif that I could form any notion to myself 
of the personality which was behind. I once 
alluded to that book in a speech at a Royal 
Academy banquet. Lord Beaconsfield waspresent, 
and was so far interested in what I said that he 
wished me to review Endymion in the Edinburgh, 
and sent me the proof-sheets of it before publica- 
tion. Edymion did not take hold of me as Lothair 
did, and I declined, but I have never lost the 
impression which I gathered out of Lothair. It 
is worse than useless to attempt the biography 
of a man unless you know, or think you know, 
what his inner nature was. ... I am quite sure 
that Lord Beaconsfield had a clearer insight 
than most men into the contemporary constitu- 
tion of Europe — that he had a real interest in 
the welfare and prospects of mankind ; and while 
perhaps he rather despised the great English 
aristocracy, he probably thought better of them 
than of any other class in England. I suppose 
that like Cicero he wished to excel, or perhaps 
more like Augustus to play his part well in the 
tragic comedy of life. I do not suppose that he 
had any vulgar ambition at all. . . ." 

The feelings with which he approached this 
not altogether congenial task are described in the 
following passages from letters to Lady Derby : 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 369 

"The Molt, September 14th, 1889. 

" If my wonderful adventure into the Beacons- 
field country comes off, I shall want all the help 
which Lord D. offered to give me. I do not 
wonder that^ he and you were both startled at 
the proposition, and I am not at all sure that in 
a respectable series of Victorian Prime Ministers 
I should be allowed to treat the subject in the 
way that I wish. The point is to make out what 
there was behind the mask. Had it not been for 
Lothair I should have said nothing but a char- 
latan. But that altered my opinion, and the 
more often I read it the more I want to know 
what his real nature was. The early life is a 
blank filled up by imaginative people out of 
Vivian Grey. I am feeling my way indirectly 
with his brother, Ralph DTsraeli, and whether I 
go on or not will depend on whether he will help 
me." 

"The Molt, November 12th, 1889. 

" The difficulty is to find out the real man that 
lay behind the sphynx-like affectations. I have 
come to think that these affectations (natural at 
first) came to be themselves affected as a useful 
defensive armour which covered the vital parts. 
Anyway, the study of him is extremely amusing. 
I had nothing elsQ to do, and I can easily throw 
what I write into the fire if it turns out unsatis- 
factory." 

Although the book was necessarily a short one, 
(3310) 24 



370 LIFE OF FROUDE 

it is too characteristic to be lightly dismissed. 
When Froude gave Mr. Reid the manuscript, he 
said, " It will please neither Disraeli's friends nor 
his foes. But it is at least an honest book." He 
heard, with more amusement than satisfaction, 
that it had pleased Gladstone. For the political 
estimate of a modern and Parliamentary states- 
man Froude lacked some indispensable quali- 
fications. He knew little, and cared less, 
about the House of Commons, in which the best 
years of Disraeli's life were passed. He despised 
the party system, of which Disraeli was at 
once a product and a devotee. He had no sym- 
pathy with Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy, 
and the colonial policy which he would have sub- 
stituted for it was outside Lord Beaconsfield's 
scope. He had adopted from Carlyle the theory 
that Disraeli and Gladstone were both adventurers, 
the difference between them being that Disraeli 
only deceived others, whereas Gladstone deceived 
also himself. But Gladstone had ignored Carlyle, 
whereas Disraeli, with singular magnanimity, had 
offered to the author of Shooting Niagara a 
pension and a Grand Cross of the Bath. 

It was, however, as a man of letters rather than 
as a politician that Disraeli fascinated Froude, 
so much so that he is betrayed into the paradox 
of representing his hero as a lover of literature 
rather than politics. Disraeli sometimes talked 
in that way himself, as when he was persuading 
Lightfoot to accept the Bishopric of Durham, 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 37^^ 

and remarked, " I, too, have sacrificed inclina- 
tion to duty." But he was hardly serious, 
(i.nd even in his novels it is the political parts 
that survive. Although Froude had found it 
impossible ^to review Endymion, the book is 
very like the author, and can only be appre- 
ciated by those who have been behind the 
scenes in politics. Froude' s idea of Disraeli as 
a man with a great opportunity who threw it 
away, who might have pacified Ireland and 
preferred to quarrel with Russia, was naturally 
not agreeable to Disraelites, and as a general 
rule it is desirable that a biographer should be 
able to write from his victim's point of view. 
Yet, all said and done, Froude' s Beacons field is 
a work of genius, the gem of the series. Pro- 
fessional politicians, with the curious exception 
of Gladstone, thought very little of it. It was 
not written for them. Disraeli was a many-sided 
man, so that there is room for various estimates 
of his character and career. Of his early life 
Froude had no special knowledge. He was not 
even aware that Disraeli had applied for office 
to Peel. He shows sometimes an indifference 
to dry details, as when he makes Gladstone 
dissolve Parliament in 1873 immediately after 
his defeat on the Irish University Bill, and repre- 
sents Russia as having by her own act repealed 
the Black Sea Clauses in the Treaty of Paris. 
Startling too is his assertion that the Parliament 
of 1868 did nothing for England or Scotland, on 



372 LIFE OF FROUDE 

account of its absorption in Irish affairs. But 
he was not writing a formal history, and these 
points did not appeal to hijn at all. He drew 
with inimitable skill a picture of the despised 
and fantastic Jew, vain as a peacock and absurdly 
dressed, alien in race and in his real creed, smiling 
sardonically at English ways, enthusiasms, and 
institutions, until he became, after years of 
struggle and obloquy, the idol of what was then 
the proudest aristocracy in the world. 

Disraeli's peculiar humour just suited Froude's 
taste. Disraeli never laughed. Even his smile 
was half inward. The irony of life, and of his 
own position, was a subject of inexhaustible 
amusement to him. There was nothing in his 
nature low, sordid, or petty. It was not money, 
nor rank, but power which he coveted, and at 
which he aimed. Irreproachable in domestic 
life, faithful in friendship, a placable enemy, 
undaunted by failure, accepting final defeat with 
philosophic calm, he played with political passions 
which he did not share, and made use of pre- 
judices which he did not feel. Froude loved 
him, as he loved Reineke Fuchs, for his weird 
incongruity with everything stuffy and common- 
place. From a constitutional history of English 
politics Disraeli might almost be omitted. 
His Reform Act was not his own, and his 
own ideas were seldom translated into practice. 
In any political romance of the Victorian age 
he would be the principal figure. In the 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 373 

Congress of Berlin, where he did nothing, or 
next to nothing, he attracted the gaze of every- 
one, not for anything he said there, but because 
he was there at all. If he had left an auto- 
biography, \it would be priceless, not for its facts, 
but for its opinions. That Froude thoroughly 
understood him it would be rash to say. But 
he did perceive by sympathetic intuition a great 
deal that an ordinary writer would have missed 
altogether. For instance, the full humour of 
that singular occasion when Benjamin Disraeli 
appeared on the platform of a Diocesan Conference 
at Oxford, with Samuel Wilberforce in the chair, 
could have been given by no one else exactly as 
Froude gave it. Nothing like it had ever happened 
before. It is scarcely possible that anything of 
the kind can ever happen again. Froude found 
the origin of the Established Church in the statutes 
of Henry VIII. Gladstone found it, or seemed 
to find it, in the poems of Homer. In Disraeli's 
eyes its pedigree was Semitic, and it ministered 
to the " craving credulity " of a sceptical age, 
undisturbed by the provincial arrogance that 
flashed or flared in an essay or review. 

" In the year 1864," says Froude, " Disraeli 
happened to be on a visit at Cuddesdon, and it 
happened equally that a Diocesan Conference was 
to be held at Oxford at the time, with Bishop 
Wilberforce in the chair. The clerical mind had 
been doubly exercised, by the appearance of 
Colenso on the * Pentateuch ' and Darwin on the 



374 LIFE OF FROUDE 

' Origin of Species.' Disraeli, to the surprise of 
every one, presented himself in the theatre. He 
had long abandoned the satins and silks of his 
youth, but he was as careful of effect as he had 
ever been, and had prepared himself in a costume 
elaborately negligent. He lounged into the 
assembly in a black velvet shooting-coat and a 
wide-awake hat, as if he had been accidentally 
passing through the town. It was the fashion 
with University intellect to despise Disraeli as 
a man with neither sweetness nor light ; but he 
was famous, or at least notorious, and when he 
rose to speak there was a general curiosity. He 
began in his usual affected manner, slowly and 
rather pompously, as if he had nothing to say 
beyond perfunctory platitudes. The Oxford wits 
began to compare themselves favourably with 
the dullness of Parliamentary orators ; when first 
one sentence and then another startled them 
into attention. They were told that the Church 
was not likely to be disestablished. It would 
remain, but would remain subject to a Parliament 
which would not allow an imperium in imperio. 
It must exert itself and reassert its authority, 
but within the limits which the law laid down. 
The interest grew deeper when he came to touch 
on the parties to one or other of which all 
his listeners belonged. High Church and Low 
Church were historical and intelligible, but 
there had arisen lately, the speaker said, a 
party called the Broad, never before heard of. 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 375 

He went on to explain what Broad Churchmen 
were." 

DisraeH's gibes at Colenso and Maurice are too 
well known to need repetition here. The equally 
famous reference to Darwin will bear to be quoted 
once more, at least as an introduction for Froude's 
incisive comment. 

" What is the question now placed before society 
with a glibness the most astounding ? The ques- 
tion is this : Is man an ape or an angel ? I, my 
lord, am on the side of the angels." 

" Mr. Disraeli," so Froude continues, "is on 
the side of the angels. Pit and gallery echoed 
with laughter. Fellows and tutors repeated the 
phrase over their port in the common room with 
shaking sides. The newspapers carried the an- 
nouncement the next morning over the length 
and breadth of the island, and the leading article 
writers struggled in their comments to maintain 
a decent gravity. Did Disraeli mean it, or was 
it but an idle jest ? and what must a man be 
who could exercise his wit on such a subject ? 
Disraeli was at least as much in earnest as his 
audience. The phrase answered its purpose. It 
has lived and become historical when the decorous 
protests of professional divines have been forgotten 
with the breath which uttered them. The note 
of scorn with which it rings has preserved it 
better than any affectation of pious horror, which 
indeed would have been out of place in the presence 
of such an assembly.'' 



376 LIFE OF FROUDE 

I have taken the Hberty of giving such emphasis 
as itahcs can confer to two brief passages in this 
brilhant description, because they express Froude's 
real opinion of Diocesan Conferences and those who 
frequented them.^ Disraeh's audience applauded, 
partly in admiration of his wit, and partly because 
they thought that he was amusing them at the 
expense of the latitudinarians they abhorred. 
Froude's appreciation came from an opposite 
source. He regarded Disraeli not as a flatterer, 
but as a busy mocker, laughing at the people who 
thought he was laughing with them. He made 
no attempt at a really critical estimate of the 
most baffling figure in English politics. He 
fastened on the picturesque aspects of Disraeli's 
career, and touched them with an artist's hand. 
As to what it all meant, or whether it meant 
anything, he left his readers as much in the dark 
as they were before. My own theory, if one must 
have a theory, is that one word explains Disraeli, 
and that that word is " ambition." If so, he was 
one of the most marvellously successful men that 
ever lived. If not, and if a different standard 
should be applied, other consequences would ensue. 
Froude gives no help in the solution of the problem. 
What he does is to portray the original genius 
which no absurdities could cover, and no obstacles 
could restrain. Disraeli the ** Imperialist " had 
no more to do with building empires than with 

^ Disraeli's contempt for italics is well known. He called 
them " the last resort of the forcible Peebles." 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 377 

building churches, but he was twice Prime Minister 
of England, 

Froude's Sea Studies in the third series of his 
collected essays are chiefly a series of thoughts on 
the plays oi Euripides. But, like so much of his 
writing, they are redolent of the ocean, on which 
and near which he always felt at home. The 
opening sentences of this fresh and wholesome 
paper are too characteristic not to be quoted. 

" To a man of middle age whose occupations 
have long confined him to the unexhilarating 
atmosphere of a library, there is something un- 
speakably delightful in a sea voyage. Increasing 
years, if they bring little else that is agreeable 
with them, bring to some of us immunity from 
sea-sickness. The regularity of habit on board 
a ship, the absence of dinner parties, the exchange 
of the table in the close room for the open deck 
under an awning, and the ever-flowing breeze 
which the motion of the vessel forbids to sink 
into a calm, give vigour to the tired system, 
restore the conscious enjoyment of elastic health, 
and even mock us for the moment with the belief 
that age is an illusion, and that * the wild freshness ' 
of the morning of life has not yet passed away 
for ever. Above our heads is the arch of the sky, 
around us the ocean, rolling free and fresh as it 
rolled a million years ago, and our spirits catch a 
contagion from the elements. Our step on the 
boards recovers its buoyancy. We are rocked 
to rest at night by a gentle movement which 



378 LIFE OF FROUDE 

soothes you into the dreamless sleep of childhood, 
and we wake with the certainty that we are beyond 
the reach of the postman. We are shut off, as 
in a Catholic retreat, from the worries and anxieties 
of the world." 

This is not the language of a man who ever 
suffered seriously from sea-sickness, and Froude's 
face had an open-air look which never suggested 
** the unexhilarating atmosphere of a Ubrary." 
But he was of course a laborious student, and 
nothing refreshed him like a voyage. On the 
yacht of his old friend Lord Ducie, as enthusiastic 
a sailor and fisherman as himself, he made several 
journeys to Norway, and caught plenty of big 
salmon. He has done ample justice to these 
expeditions in the last volume of his essays, 
which contains The Spanish Story of the Armada. 
A country where the mountains are impassable, 
and the fiords the only roads, just suited his taste. 
It even inspired him with a poem, Romsdal Fiord, 
which appeared in Blackwood for April, 1883, and 
it gave him health, which is not always, like 
poetry, a pure gift of nature. 

The life of society, and of towns, never satisfied 
Froude. Apart from his genius and his training, 
he was a country gentleman, and felt most at 
home when he was out of doors. 

From Panshanger he wrote to Lady Derby : 

" How well I understand what you felt sitting 
on the top of the Pyrenees. We men are but a 
sorry part of the creation. Now and then there 



BOOKS AND TRAVEL 379 

comes to us a breath out of another order of 
things ; a sudden perception — coming we cannot 
tell how — of the artificial and contemptible exist- 
ence we are all living ; a longing to be out of it 
and have done with it — by a pistol-shot if nothing 
else will do. I continually wonder at myself for 
remaining in London when I can go where I 
please, and take with me all the occupations I 
am fit for. Alas ! it is oneself that one wants 
really to be rid of. If we did not ourselves share 
in the passions and follies that are working round 
us we should not be touched by them, I have 
made up my mind to leave it all, at all events, as 
soon as Mr. Carlyle is gone; but the enchantment 
which scenery, grand or beautiful, or which simple 
country life promises at a distance, will never 
abide — let us be where we will. It comes in 
moments like a revelation ; like the faces of those 
whom we have loved and lost ; which pass before 
us, and we stretch our hands to clasp them and 
they are gone. I came here yesterday for two 
or three days. The house is full of the young 
generation. They don't attract me. . . . What- 
ever their faults, diffidence is not one of them. 
Macaulay's doctrine of the natural superiority of 
each new generation to its predecessor seems most 
heartily accepted and believed. The superb pic- 
tures in the house are a silent protest against the 
cant of progress. You look into the faces of the 
men and the women on the walls and can scarcely 
believe they are the same race with us. I have 



38o LIFE OF FROUDE 

sometimes thought ' the numbers ' of the elect 
have been really fulfilled, and that the rest of us 
are left to gibber away an existence back into an 
apehood which we now recognise as our real 
primitive type." 

From the Molt, on the other hand, he wrote : 
"It is near midnight. I have just come in 
from the terrace. The moon is full over the sea, 
which is glittering as if it was molten gold. The 
rocks and promontories stand out clear and 
ghost-like. There is not a breath to rustle the 
leaves or to stir the painted wash upon the shore. 
Men and men's doings, and their speeches and 
idle excitement, seem all poor, transient, and 
contemptible. Sea and rocks and moonlight 
looked just as they look to-night before Adam 
sinned in Paradise. They remain — we come and 
go, hardly more enduring than the moth that 
flutters in through the window, and we are hardly 
of more consequence." 



CHAPTER X 

THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 

ON the i6th of March, 1892, Froude's old 
antagonist, Freeman, who had been Regius 
Professor of Modern History at Oxford since 
Stubbs's elevation to the Episcopal Bench in 1884, 
died suddenly in Spain. The Prime Minister, who 
was also Chancellor of the University, offered the 
vacant Chair to Froude, and after some hesitation 
Froude accepted it. The doubt was due to his 
age. '' There are seventy-four reasons against 
it," he said. Fortunately he yielded. '' The 
temptation of going back to Oxford in a re- 
spectable way," he wrote to Skelton, ^' was too 
much for me. I must just do the best I can, 
and trust that I shall not be haunted by Free- 
man's ghost." Lord Salisbury did a bold thing 
when he appointed Froude successor to Freeman. 
Froude had indeed a more than European repu- 
tation as a man of letters, and was acknow- 
ledged to be a master of English prose. But he 
was seventy-four, iive years older than Freeman, 
and he had never taught in his life, except as tutor 
for a very brief time in two private families. 
The Historical School at Oxford had been trained 

381 



382 LIFE OF FROUDE 

to believe that Stubbs was the great historian, 
that Freeman was his prophet, and that Froude 
was not an historian at all. Lord Salisbury of 
course knew better, for it was at Hatfield that some 
of Froude' s most thorough historical work had 
been done. Still, it required some courage to 
fly in the face of all that was pedantic in Oxford, 
and to nominate in Freeman's room the writer 
that Freeman had spent the best years of his life 
in " belabouring." Some critics attributed the 
selection to Lord Salisbury's sardonic humour, 
or pronounced that, as Lamb said of Coleridge's 
metaphysics, " it was only his fun." Some stig- 
matised it as a party job. Gladstone's nominee, 
Freeman, had been a Home Ruler, Froude was a 
Unionist ; what could be clearer than the motive ? 
But both nominations could be defended on their 
own merits, and a Regius Professorship should 
not be the monopoly of a clique. 

Lord Salisbury's choice of Froude was indeed, 
like Lord Rosebery's subsequent choice of 
Lord Acton for Cambridge, an example which 
justified the patronage of the Crown. A Prime 
Minister has more courage than an academic 
board, and is guided by larger considerations. 
Froude was one of the most distinguished among 
living Oxonians, and yet Oxford had not even 
given him an honorary degree. Membership of 
the Scottish Universities Commission in 1876 was 
the only official acknowledgment of his services 
to culture that he had ever received, and that was 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 383 

more of an obligation than a compliment. 
" Froude/' said Jowett, " is a man of genius. 
He has been abominably treated." Lord Salisbury 
had made amends. Himself a man of the highest 
intellectual distinction^ apart from the offices he 
happened to hold, he had promoted Froude to 
great honour in the place he loved best, and the 
most eminent of living English historians returned 
to Oxford in the character which was his due. 

The new Professor gave up his house in London, 
and settled at Cherwell Edge, near the famous 
bathing-place called Parson's Pleasure.^ He found 
the University a totally different place from what 
it was when he first knew it. Dr. Arnold, who died 
in 1842, the year after his appointment, was the 
earliest Professor whose lectures were famous, 
or were attended, and Dr. Arnold did exactly as 
he pleased. There was no Board of Studies to 
supervise him, and it was thought rather good of 
a Professor to lecture at all. Now the Board of 
Studies was omnipotent, and a Professor's time was 
not his own. He was bound in fact to give forty- 
two lectures in a year, and to lecture twice a week 
for seven weeks in two terms out of the three. 
The prospect appalled him. " I never," he wrote 
to Max Miiller, ^ " I never gave a lecture on an 
historical subject without a fortnight or three 
weeks of preparation, and to undertake to 
deliver forty-two such lectures in six months 

* The house is now, oddly enough, a Catholic convent, 
' April 1 8th, 1892. 



384 LIFE OF FROUDE 

would be to undertake an impossibility. If the 
University is to get any good out of me, I must 
work in my own way." He did not, however, 
work in his own way, and the University got a 
great deal of good out of him all the same. 

Lord Salisbury, in making Froude the offer, spoke 
apologetically of the stipend as small, but added 
that the work would be light. The accomplished 
Chancellor was imperfectly informed. The stipend 
was small enough : the work was extremely hard 
for a man of seventy-four. Froude's conscien- 
tiousness in preparation was almost excessive. 
Every lecture was written out twice from notes for 
improvement of style and matter. His audiences 
were naturally large, for not since the days of 
Mr. Goldwin Smith, who resigned in 1866, had 
anything like Froude's lectures been heard at 
Oxford. When I was an undergraduate, in the 
seventies, we all of course knew that Professor 
Stubbs had a European reputation for learning. 
But, except to those reading for the History 
School, Stubbs was a name, and nothing more. 
Nobody ever dreamt of going to hear him. Crowds 
flocked to hear Froude, as in my time they flocked 
to hear Ruskin. 

One sex was as well represented as the other. 
Froude had left the dons celibate and clerical. 
He found them, for the most part, married and lay. 
There was every variety of opinion in the common 
rooms, and every variety of perambulators in the 
parks. London hours had been adopted, and 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 385 

the society, though by no means frivolous or 
ostentatious, was anything rather than monastic. 
At Oxford, as in London, Froude was almost 
always the best talker in the room. He had 
travelled, not so much in Europe as in America 
and the more distant parts of the British Empire. 
He had read almost everything, and known 
almost every one. His boyish enthusiasm for 
deeds of adventure was not abated. He be- 
lieved in soldiers and sailors, especially sailors. 
Creeds, Parliaments, and constitutions did not 
greatly attract or keenly interest him. Old as 
he was by the almanac, he retained the buoyant 
freshness of youth, and loved watching the eights 
on the river as much as any undergraduate. 
The chapel services, especially at Magdalen, 
brought back old times and tastes. As Professor 
of History he became a Fellow of Oriel, where he 
had been a commoner in the thick of the Oxford 
Movement. If the Tractarian tutors could have 
heard the conversation of their successors, they 
would have been astonished and perplexed. Even 
the Essayists and Reviewers would have been in- 
clined to wish that some things could be taken 
for granted. Modern Oxford was not altogether 
congenial to Froude. While he could not 
be called orthodox, he detested materialism, 
and felt sympathy, if not agreement, with 
Evangelical Protestants. Like Bacon, he would 
rather believe all the legends of the Talmud than 
that this universal frame was without a mind. 
(2310) 25 



386 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Of the questions which absorbed High Church- 
men he said, ** One might as well be interested 
in the amours of the heathen gods." On the 
other hand, he had no sympathy with the new 
school of specialists, the devotees of original 
research. He believed in education as a training 
of the mental faculties, and thought that under- 
graduates should learn to use their own minds. 
** I can see what books the boys have read," he 
observed, after examining for the Arnold Essay 
Prize, " but I cannot see that they make any use 
of what they have read. They seem to have no 
power of assimilation." The study of authorities 
at first hand, to which he had given so much of 
his own time, he regarded as the work of a few, 
and as occupation for later years. The faculty of 
thinking, and the art of writing, could not be 
learned too soon. 

Few indeed were the old friends who remained 
at Oxford to welcome him back. Max Miiller 
was the most intimate of them, and among his 
few surviving contemporaries was Bartholomew 
Price, Master of Pembroke, a clergyman more 
distinguished in mathematics than in theology. 
The Rector of Exeter ^ gave a cordial welcome 
to the most illustrious of its former Fellows. The 
Provost of Oriel ^ was equally gracious. In 
the younger generation of Heads his chief friends 
were the Dean of Christ Church,^ now Bishop of 
Oxford, and the President of Magdalen.* But 

1 Dr. Jackson. ^ Mr, Monro. ^ Dr. Paget. * Mr. Warren. 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 387 

the Oxford of 1892 was so unlike the Oxford of 
1849 that Froude might well feel like one of the 
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. And if there had 
been many changes in Oxford, there had been 
some also in^himself. He had long ceased to be, 
so far as he ever was, a clergyman. He had been 
twice married, and twice left a widower. His 
children had grown up. His fame as an author 
extended far beyond the limits of his own country, 
and of Europe. He had made Carlyle's acquaint- 
ance, become his intimate friend, and written 
a biography of him which numbered as many 
readers as The French Revolution itself. He 
had lectured in the United States, and challenged 
the representatives of Irish Nationalism on the 
history of their own land. He had visited most 
of the British Colonies, and promoted to the 
best of his ability the Federation of South Africa. 
Few men had seen more, or read more, or enjoyed 
a wider experience of the world. What were 
the lessons which after such a life he chiefly 
desired to teach young Englishmen who were 
studying the past ? The value of their religious 
reformation, and the achievements of their naval 
heroes. The Authorised Version and the Navy 
were in his mind the symbols of England's great- 
ness. Greater Britain, including Britain beyond 
the seas, was the goal of his hopes for the future 
progress of the race. There were in Oxford 
more learned men than Froude, Max Miiller for 
one. There was not a single Professor, or tutor, 



388 LIFE OF FROUDE 

who could compare with him for the multitude 
and variety of his experience. Undergraduates 
were fascinated by him, as everybody else was. 
The dignitaries of the place, except a stray Free- 
manite here and there, recognised the advantage 
of having so distinguished a personage in so 
conspicuous a Chair. Even in a Professor other 
qualities are required besides erudition. Stubbs's 
Constitutional History of England may be a useful 
book for students. Unless or until it is rewritten, 
it can have no existence for the general reader; 
and if the test of impartiality be applied, Stubbs 
is as much for the Church against the State as 
Froude is for the State against the Church. When 
Mr. Goldwin Smith resigned the Professorship 
of Modern History, or contemplated resigning it, 
Stubbs wrote to Freeman, " It would be painful 
to have Froude, and worse still to have anybody 
else." He received the appointment himself, 
and held it for eighteen years, when he gave 
way to Freeman, and more than a quarter of a 
century elapsed before the painful event occurred. 
By that time Stubbs was Bishop of Oxford, 
translated from Chester, and had shown what 
a fatal combination for a modern prelate is 
learning with humour. If Froude had been 
appointed twenty years earlier, on the completion 
of his twelve volumes, he might have made 
Oxford the great historical school of England. 
But it was too late. The aftermath was wonderful, 
and the lectures he delivered at Oxford show 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 389 

him at his best. But the effort was too much 
for him, and hastened his end. 

It must not be supposed that Froude felt 
only the burden. His powers of enjoyment 
were great, ^nd he thoroughly enjoyed Oxford. 
He had left it forty years ago under a cloud. 
He came back in a dignified character with an 
assured position. He liked the familiar buildings 
and the society of scholars. The young men 
interested and amused him. Ironical as he 
might be at times, and pessimistic, his talk was 
intellectually stimulating. His strong convic- 
tions, even his inveterate prejudices, prevented 
his irony from degenerating into cynicism. 
History, said Carlyle, is the quintessence of in- 
numerable biographies, and it was always the 
human side of history that appealed to Froude. 
He once playfully compared himself with the 
Mephistopheles of Faust, sitting in the Professor's 
chair. But in truth he saw always behind 
historical events the directing providence of God. 
Newman held that no belief could stand against 
the destructive force of the human reason, the 
intellectus sihi permissus. Froude felt that there 
were things which reason could not explain, and 
that no revelation was needed to trace the limits 
of knowledge. Sceptical as he was in many 
ways, he had the belief which is fundamental, 
which no scientific discovery or philosophic specu- 
lation can shake or move. Creeds and Churches 
might come or go. The moral law remained 



390 LIFE OF FROUDE 

where it was. His own creed is expressed 
in that which he attributes to Luther. " The 
faith which Luther himself would have described 
as the faith that saved is the faith that beyond 
all things and always truth is the most precious 
of possessions, and truthfulness the most precious 
of qualities ; that when truth calls, whatever 
the consequence, a brave man is bound to follow." ^ 
Although Froude was probably happier at Oxford 
than he had been at any time since 1874, the regu- 
lations of his professorship worried him, as they 
had worried Stubbs and Freeman. They seemed 
to have been drawn on the assumption that a 
Professor would evade his duties, and behave 
like an idle undergraduate. Froude, on the con- 
trary, interpreted them in the sense most adverse 
to himself. The authorities of the place, or some 
of them, would have had him spare his pains, and 
colourably evade the statute by talking instead 
of lecturing. But Froude was too conscientious 
to seek relief in this way. Whatever he had to 
do he did thoroughly, conscientiously, and as well 
as he could. There is no trace of senility in his 
professorial utterances. On the contrary, they 
are full of life and fire. Yet Froude was by no 
means entirely engrossed in his work. He had 
time for hospitality, and for making friends with 
young men. He loved his familiar surroundings, 
for nothing can vulgarise Oxford. He found 
men who still read the classics as literature, 

* Short Studies, iii. 189. 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 391 

not to convict Aeschylus of violating Dawes's 
Canon, or to get loafers through the schools. 
He was not in all respects, it must be admitted, 
abreast of modern thought. His education had 
been unscientific, and he cared no more for Darwin 
than Carlyle did. He had learnt from his brother 
William, who died in 1879,^ ^^^ scope and tendency 
of modern experiments, and astronomical illus- 
trations are not uncommon in his writings. But 
the bent of his mind was in other directions, and 
he had never been under the influence of Spencer 
or of Mill. The Oxford which he left in 1849 was 
dominated by Aristotle and Bishop Butler. He 
came back to find Butler dethroned, and more 
modern philosophers established in his place. 
Aristotle remained where he was, not the type and 
symbol of universal knowledge, as Dante conceived 
him, but the groundwork upon which all later 
systems had been built. Plato, without whom 
there would have been no Aristotle, was more 

-' My brother," Froude wrote to Lady Derby, '- though his 
name was Uttle before the pubHc, was well known to the Admiralty 
and indeed in every dock-yard in Europe. He has contributed 
more than any man of his time to the scientific understanding 
of ships and ship-building. His inner life was still more remark- 
able. He resisted the influence of Newman when all the rest of 
his family gave way, refusing to become a CathoUc when they 
went over, and keeping steadily to his own honest convictions. 
To me he was ever the most affectionate of friends. The earliest 
recollections of my life are bound up with him, and his death 
takes away a large part of the little interest which remained to 
me in this most uninteresting world. The loss to the Admiralty 
for the special work in which he was engaged will be almost 
irreparable." 



392 LIFE OF FROUDE 

closely and reverently studied than ever, partly 
no doubt through Jowett, and yet mainly because 
no philosopher can ever get far away from him, 
Jowett himself, the ideal " Head of a House/* 
who had been at Balliol when Froude was at Oriel, 
died in the second year of Froude' s professorship, 
after seeing many of his pupils famous in the world. 
He had lived through the great period of transition 
in which Oxford passed from a monastery to a 
microcosm. The Act of 1854 had opened the 
University to Dissenters, reserving fellowships and 
scholarships, all places of honour and emolument, 
for members of the Established Church. The Act 
of 1871 removed the test of churchmanship for all 
such places, and for the higher degrees, except 
theological professorships and degrees in divinity. 
The Act of 1877 opened the Headships of the 
Colleges, and put an end to prize Fellowships for 
life. The Provost of Oriel, then Vice-Chancellor, 
was a layman. Marriage did not terminate a 
Fellowship, which, unless it were connected with 
academic work, lasted for seven years, and no 
longer. The old collegiate existence was at an 
end. Many of the tutors were married, and lived 
in their own houses. When Gladstone revisited 
Oxford in 1890, and occupied rooms in college as 
an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, nothing pleased 
him less than the number of women he encountered 
at every turn. They were not all the wives and 
daughters of the dons, who in Gladstone's view 
had no more right to such appendages than priests 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 393 

of the Roman Church ; there were also the 
students at the Ladies' Colleges, who were allowed 
to compete for honours, though not to receive 
degrees. 

Froude, who brought his own daughters with 
him, entered easily into the changed conditions. 
He was not given to lamentation over the past, 
and if he regretted anything it was the want 
of Puritan earnestness, of serious purpose in 
life. He had an instinctive sympathy with men 
of action, whether they were soldiers, sailors, or 
statesmen. For mere talkers he had no respect 
at all, and he was under the mistaken impression 
that they governed the country through the House 
of Commons. He never realised, any more than 
Carlyle, the vast amount of practical administra- 
tive work which such a man as Gladstone achieved, 
or on the other hand the immense weight carried 
in Parliament by practical ability and experience, 
as distinguished from brilliancy and rhetoric. 
The history which he liked, and to which he 
confined himself, was antecedent to the triumph 
of Parliament over the Crown. Warren Hastings, 
he used to say, conquered India ; Burke would 
have hanged him for doing it. The House of 
Lords acquitted Hastings ; and so far from criti- 
cising the doubtful policy of the war with France 
in 1793, Burke's only complaint of Pitt was that 
he did not carry it on with sufficient vigour. The 
distinction between talkers and doers is really 
fallacious. Some speeches are actions. Some 



394 LIFE OF FROUDE 

actions are too trivial to deserve the name. But 
if Froude was incapable of understanding Parlia- 
mentary government, he very seldom attempted 
to deal with it. The English in Ireland is a rare, 
and not a fortunate, exception. The House of 
Tudor was far more congenial to him than either 
the House of Stuart or the House of Brunswick. 
Froude delivered his Inaugural Lecture on the 
27th of October, 1892. The place was the Museum, 
which stands in the parks opposite Keble, and the 
attendance was very large. In the history of 
Oxford there have been few more remarkable 
occasions. Although the new Professor had made 
his name and writings familiar to the whole of the 
educated world, his immediate predecessor had 
vehemently denied his right to the name of 
historian, and had assured the public with all the 
emphasis which reiteration can give that Froude 
could not distinguish falsehood from truth. If 
anything could have brought Freeman out of his 
grave, it would have been Froude' s appointment 
to succeed him. It is the custom in an Inaugural 
Lecture to mention in eulogistic language the 
late occupant of the chair. No man was less 
inclined to bear malice than Froude. His dis- 
position was placable, and his temperament calm. 
Freeman had grossly and frequently insulted him 
without the faintest provocation. But he had 
long since taken his revenge, such as it was, and 
he could afford to be generous now. He dis- 
covered, with some ingenuity, a point of agreement 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 395 

in that Freeman, like himself, was a champion 
of classical education. Therefore, " along with his 
asperities," he had " strong masculine sense," 
and had voted for compulsory Greek. If the right 
of suffrage^ were restricted to men who knew 
Greek as well as Froude or Freeman, the decisions 
of Congregation at Oxford, and of the Senate at 
Cambridge, would command more respect. 

Froude must have been reminded by the obliga- 
tory reference to Freeman that a man of seventy- 
four was succeeding a man of sixty-nine. The 
Roman Cardinals were, he said, in the habit of 
electing an aged Pontiff with the hope, not always 
fulfilled, that he would die soon. He had no belief 
that such an expectation would be falsified in his 
own case, and he undertook, with obvious sincerity, 
not to hold the post for a single day after he had 
ceased to be capable of efficiently discharging 
his functions. To history his own life had been 
devoted, and it would indeed have been strange 
if he could not give young men some help in 
reading it. His own great book might not be 
officially recommended for the schools. It was 
unofficially recommended by all lovers of good 
literature and sound learning. Like most people 
who know the meaning of science and of history, 
he denied that history was a science. There were 
no fixed and Ascertained principles by which 
the actions of men were determined. There was 
no possibility of trying experiments. The late 
Mr. Buckle had not displaced the methods of the 



396 LIFE OF FROUDE 

older historians, nor founded a system of his 
own. ** I have no philosophy of history/' added 
Froude, who disbelieved in the universal appli- 
cability of general truths. Here, perhaps, he is 
hardly just to himself. The introductory chapter 
to his History of the Reformation, especially the 
impressive contrast between modern and mediaeval 
England, is essentially philosophical, so much so 
that one sees in it the student of Thucydides, 
Tacitus, and Gibbon. History to Froude, like the 
world to Jaques, was a stage, and all the men and 
women merely players. But a lover of Goethe 
knows well enough that the drama can be philo- 
sophical, and Shakespeare, the master of human 
nature, has drawn nothing more impressive than the 
close of Wolsey's career. " The history of mankind 
is the history of great men," was Carlyle's motto, 
and Froude' s. It is a noble one, and to discredit 
great men with low motives is the vice of ignoble 
minds. The reign of Henry VIII., after Wolsey's 
fall, was rich in horrors and in tragical catas- 
trophes. But it was not a mere carnival of lust 
and blood. High principles were at stake, and 
profound issues divided parties, beside which the 
levity of Anne Boleyn and the eyes of Jane 
Seymour were not worth a moment's thought. 
Hobbes wondered that a Parliament man worth 
thousands of pounds, like Hampden, should scruple 
to pay twenty shillings for ship-money, as if the 
amount had anything to do with the principle 
that taxes could only be levied by the House of 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 397 

Commons. Henry's vices are dust in the balance 
against the fact that he stood for England against 
Rome. It is one of Froude's chief merits that he 
never fails to see the wood for the trees, never 
forgets general propositions to lose himself in de- 
tails. A novice whose own mind is a blank may 
read whole chapters of Gardiner without dis- 
covering that any events of much significance 
happened in the seventeenth century. He will 
not read many pages of Froude before he perceives 
that the sixteenth century established our national 
independence. 

Two of Froude's pet hobbies may be found in 
his Inaugural Lecture. There is the theory that 
judgment falls upon idleness and vice, which he 
adopted from Carlyle. There is his own doctrine 
that the Statute Book furnishes the most authentic 
material of history. It is no answer to say that 
preambles are inserted by Ministers, who put 
their own case and not the case of the nation. 
In the use or reception of all evidence allowance 
must be made for the source from which it comes. 
But even Governments do not invent out of their 
own heads, or put into statutes what is foreign to 
the public mind. They employ the arguments 
most likely to prevail, and these must be closely 
connected with the circumstances of the day. No 
recital in an Act 'of Parliament can prove incon- 
t est ably that the monasteries were stews, or worse. 
That such a thing could be plausibly alleged, and 
generally believed, is itself important, and history 



398 LIFE OF FROUDE 

must take account of popular views. Debates 
were not reported in the sixteenth century, nor 
was freedom of speech in ParHament recognised 
by the Crown. There was nothing to ensure a 
fair trial for the victims of a royal prosecution, 
and testimony obtained by torture was accepted 
as authentic. All these are facts, and to neglect 
them is to go astray. But they do not prove that 
every public document is untrustworthy ; or that 
the words of a statute have no more to do with 
reality than the words of a romance. It is a 
question of degree. Historical narrative could 
not be written under the conditions most properly 
imposed upon criminal proceedings in a court of 
law. If nothing which cannot be proved beyond 
the possibility of reasonable doubt is admitted 
into the pages of history, they will be bare indeed. 
It is significant that Froude laid down in 1892 
the same propositions for which he had contended 
in the Oxford Essays of 1855. He had suffered 
many things in the meantime of The Saturday 
Review, but he held to his old opinions with un- 
shaken tenacity. All Froude' s changes were made 
early in life. When once he had shaken himself 
free of Tractarianism, The Nemesis of Faith, and 
Elective Affinities, he remained a Protestant, 
Puritan, sea-loving, priest-hating Englishman. 

The subject with which Froude began his brief 
career as Professor was the Council of Trent. 
The Council of Trent has been described by one 
of the great historians of the world, Fra Paolo 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 399 

Sarpi, whom Macaulay considered second only 
to Thucydides. Entirely ineffective for the pur- 
pose of securing universal concord, it did in reality 
separate Protestant from Catholic Europe, and 
establish Papal authority over the Church of 
Rome. When the Council met, the Papacy was 
no part of orthodox Catholicism, and Henry VHI. 
never dreamt that in repudiating the jurisdiction 
of the Pope he severed himself from the Catholic 
Church. If Luther had been only a heretic, the 
Council might have put him down. But he had 
behind him the bulk of the laity, and Cardinal 
Contarini told Paul III. that the revolt against 
ecclesiastical power would continue if every priest 
submitted. ** The Reformation," said Froude at 
the beginning of his first course, in November, 
1892, " is the hinge on which all modern history 
turns." He traced in it the rise of England's 
greatness. When he came back in his old age 
to Oxford, it was to sound the trumpet-note of 
private judgment and religious liberty, as if the 
Oxford Movement and the Anglo-Catholic revival 
had never been. Froude could not be indiffer- 
ent to the moral side of historical questions, or 
accept the doctrine that every one is right from 
his own point of view. The Reformation did 
in his eyes determine that men were responsible 
to God alone, and* not to priests or Churches, 
for their opinions and their deeds. It also 
decided that the Church must be subordinate 
to the State, not the State to the Church. This 



400 LIFE OF FROUDE 

is called Erastianism, and is the bugbear of High 
Churchmen. But there is no escape from the 
alternative, and the Church of Rome has never 
abandoned her claim to universal authority. 
Against it Henry VHI. and Cromwell, Elizabeth 
and Cecil, set up the supremacy of the law, made 
and administered by laymen. As Froude said 
at the close of his first course, in the Hilary Term 
of 1893, " the principles on which the laity in- 
sisted have become the rule of the modern world. 
Popes no longer depose Princes, dispense with 
oaths, or absolve subjects from their allegiance. 
Appeals are not any more carried to Rome from 
the national tribunals, nor justice sold there to 
the highest bidder." Justice was sold at Rome 
before the existence of the Catholic Church, or 
even the Christian religion. It has been sold, 
as Hugh Latimer testified, in England herself. 
But with the English Court's independence of 
the Holy See came the principles of civil and 
religious freedom. 

Few things annoyed Froude more than the 
attacks of Macaulay and other Liberals upon 
Cranmer. This was not merely sentimental attach- 
ment on Froude' s part to the compiler of the 
Prayer Book. He looked on the Marian Martyrs 
as the precursors of the Long Parliament and of 
the Revolution, the champions of liberty in Church 
and State. He would have felt that he was doing 
less than his duty if he had taught his pupils mere 
facts. Those facts had a lesson, for them as well 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 401 

as for him, and his sense of what the lesson was 
had deepened with years. He had observed in his 
own day an event which made much the same im- 
pression upon him as study of the French Revolu- 
tion had ma(ie upon Carlyle. When the Second 
Empire perished at Sedan, Froude saw in the 
catastrophe the judgment of Providence upon a 
sinister and tortuous career. If the duty of an 
historian be to exclude moral considerations, 
Froude did not fulfil it. That there were good 
men on the wrong side he perceived plainly enough. 
But that did not make it the right side, nor confuse 
the difference between the two. 

Froude' s second set of Oxford lectures, begun 
in the Easter Term of 1893, was entitled English 
Seamen of the Sixteenth Century, and the name 
of the first lecture in it, a thoroughly characteristic 
name, was The Sea Cradle of the Reformation. He 
was in his element, and his success was complete. 
How Protestant England ousted Catholic Spain 
from the command of the ocean, and made it 
Britannia's realm, was a story which he loved 
to tell. " The young King," Henry VIII., " like 
a wise man, turned his first attention to the broad 
ditch, as he called the British Channel, which 
formed the natural defence of the kingdom." 
It was " the secret determined poHcy of Spain 
to destroy the English fleet, pilots, masters, and 
sailors, by means of the Inquisition." In 1562, 
according to Cecil, more than twenty British 
subjects had been burnt at the stake in Spain 

(2310) 26 



402 LIFE OF FROUDE 

for heresy, and more than two hundred were 
starving in Spanish prisons. There was work 
for Hawkins and Drake. They were both Devon- 
shire men, Hke Raleigh. 

'Twas ever the way with good Queen Bess, 

Who ruled as well as a mortal can, 
When she was stogged, and the country in a mess. 

To send for a Devonshire man. 

Spain paid heavily for the persecution of 
British sailors. In his fifth lecture, Parties in 
the State, Froude read with dramatic emphasis, 
and in a singularly impressive manner, the applica- 
tion of a seaman to Elizabeth for leave to attack 
Philip's men-of-war off the banks of Newfoundland. 
" Give me five vessels, and I will go out and sink 
them all, and the galleons shall rot in Cadiz 
Harbour for want of hands to sail them. But 
decide. Madam, and decide quickly. Time flies, 
and will not return. The wings of man's life are 
plumed with the feathers of death'' When he uttered 
these tragic words, Froude paused, and looked 
up, and it seemed to those who heard him as if 
he felt that the time of his own departure was 
at hand. Elizabeth herself was never moved 
by sentiment, and final vengeance on Spain 
had to wait for the Armada, with which these 
lectures, like the History, conclude. The con- 
sequences he left to others who had more years 
before them than he himself. He loved to dwell 
on the glories of seamen, especially Devonshire 
seamen, whose descendants he had known from 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 403 

his boyhood. The open sea and the open air, 
the stars and the waves, were akin to him. 
His companions sometimes thought that he 
cared too httle for the perils of the deep. A 
lady who went boating with him, and hazarded 
the opinion that they would be drowned, got 
no warmer comfort than '* Very likely," which 
struck her as grim. Probably he knew that there 
was no danger. He was accustomed to storms, 
and rather enjoyed them than otherwise. His 
lectures on the Elizabethan heroes of the sea 
had a fascination for young Englishmen which 
no historical discourses ever surpassed. 

These sea-tales were spread over a year, being 
delivered in the Easter Terms of 1893 and 1894. 
Before they were finished Froude had begun 
another course on the life and correspondence of 
Erasmus. Erasmus is one of the choicest names 
in the history of letters, the flower of the religious 
Renaissance. Simply and sincerely pious, he 
enjoyed without abusing all the pleasures of life, 
wrote such Latin prose as had not been known 
since Pliny, and learnt Greek that he might under- 
stand the true meaning of the New Testament. 
Hating the monks of his own time for their igno- 
rance and coarseness, he was as learned as any 
Benedictine of old, and as a master of irony he 
is like a gentler Pascal, a more reverent Voltaire. 
He loved England, the England of Archbishop 
Warham, Dean Colet, and Sir Thomas More. 
English ladies too were much to his taste, and in 



404 LIFE OF FROUDE 

his familiar letters he has described their charms 
with frank appreciation. Priest as he was, and 
strictly moral, he cultivated an innocent epicurean- 
ism, including the collection of manuscripts and 
the exposure of pretentious ignorance in high 
places. He felt imperfect sympathy with Luther, 
and his literary criticism would have made no 
reformation. He was indeed precisely what we 
now call a Broad Churchman, accepting forms 
as convenient, though not essential, to faith. No 
one was better qualified to interpret him than 
Froude, whose translations of his letters, though 
free and sometimes loose, are vivid, racy, and 
idiomatic. Froude was by no means a blind 
admirer of Erasmus. His favourite heroes were 
men of action, and he regarded Luther as the 
real champion of spiritual freedom. Intellect, 
he used to say, fought no battles, and was no match 
for superstition. Without Luther there would 
have been no Reformation. There might well 
have been a Reformation without Erasmus. 

Neither of them was necessary according to 
Contarini, and in truth the Reformation had many 
sides. When Selden attended the Westminster 
Assembly of Divines, he took occasion to remind 
his colleagues that the Scriptures were not written 
in English. " Perhaps in your little pocket 
Bibles with gilt leaves " (which they would often 
pull out and read) ^' the translation may be thus, 
but the Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus and 
thus." So he would speak, says Whit clock, and 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 405 

totally silence them. But neither were the 
Scriptures written in Latin. It was Erasmus 
who revived the study of the Greek Testament, 
the charter of the scholar's reformation. He gave 
the Renaissance, in its origin purely Pagan, a 
Christian direction, and prevented the divorce of 
learning from religion. He also protested against 
the confusion of Christianity with asceticism, and 
against belief in the superior sanctity of monks. 
He turned his satire upon corruption in high places, 
and did not spare the Holy See. His residence in 
England, his friendship with More, his admiration for 
the earlier and better part of Henry VIII.'s career, 
connected him with events of which Froude had 
himself traced the development . Luther moved him 
sometimes to sarcasm . Toleration and comprehen- 
sion were the watchwords of Erasmus. " Reduce 
the dogmas necessary to be believed, " he said, " to 
the smallest possible number ; you can do it without 
danger to the realities of Christianity. On other 
points, either discourage inquiry, or leave every one 
to believe what he pleases — then we shall have 
no more quarrels, and religion will again take 
hold of life." The subject was not a new one to 
Froude. He had lectured on Erasmus and Luther 
at Newcastle five-and-twenty years before. The 
contrast between the two reformers is perennially 
interesting. Goethe, a supreme critic, thought 
that reform of the Church should have been left 
to Erasmus, and that Luther was a misfortune. 
But then Goethe, though he understood religious 



4o6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

enthusiasm, did not see the need for it, and would 
have tolerated such a Pope as Leo X., who had 
excellent taste in literature, rather than see issues 
submitted to the people which should be left 
for the learned to decide. 

The weak point of Froude's Erasmus is the 
inaccuracy of its verbal scholarship. " Sir," said 
Dr. Johnson of a loose scholar, " he makes out the 
Latin from the meaning, not the meaning from 
the Latin." This biting sarcasm would be inap- 
plicable to Froude, who knew the dead languages, 
as they are called, well enough to read them with 
ease and enjoyment. But he took in the general 
sense of a passage so quickly that he did not 
always, even in translating, stop to consider 
the precise significance of every word. Literal 
conformity with the original text is of course 
not possible or desirable in a paraphrase. What 
Froude did not sufficiently consider was the 
difference between the translation and the trans- 
lator himself, who cannot paraphrase properly 
unless he renders literally in his own mind. Froude 
gave abundant proof of his good faith by quoting 
in notes some of the very passages which are 
incorrectly rendered above. A great deal has 
been made by a Catholic critic of the fact that 
the book which checked Ignatius Loyola's 
** devotional emotions " was not Erasmus's Greek 
Testament, but his Enchiridion Militis Christiani, 
Christian Soldier's Manual. This mistake was un- 
duly favourable to the saint. Froude did not mean 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 407 

to imply that it was the actual words of Scripture 
which had this effect upon Ignatius. He was 
referring to the great scholar's own notes, which 
are polemical, and not intended to please monks. 
The founder^ of the Jesuits would have doubtless 
regarded them as most detestable blasphemy. The 
Enchiridion, on the other hand, is a purely devo- 
tional book, though written for a man of the world. 
" My object," says Froude in his Preface, 
" has been rather to lead historical students to 
a study of Erasmus's own writings than to 
provide an abbreviated substitute for them." 
The students who took the advice will have 
found that Froude was guilty of some strange 
inadvertences, such as mistaking through a 
misprint a foster brother for a collection of the 
classics, but they will not have discovered any- 
thing which substantially impairs the value of 
his work. His paraphrases were submitted to 
two competent scholars, who drew up a long 
and rather formidable list of apparently in- 
accurate renderings. These were in turn sub- 
mitted to the accomplished Latinist, Mr. Allen of 
Corpus, who is editing the Letters of Erasmus 
for the Clarendon Press. Mr. Allen thought 
that in several cases Froude had given the true 
meaning better than a more literal translation 
would give it. There remain a number of rather 
trivial slips, which do not appreciably diminish 
the merit of the best attempt ever made to set 
Erasmus before English readers in his habit 



4o8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

as he was. The Latin of Erasmus is not always 
easy. He wrote it beautifully, but not naturally, 
as an exercise in imitation of Cicero. Without a 
thorough knowledge of Cicero and of Terence he is 
sometimes unintelligible, in a few cases the text 
of his letters is corrupt, and in others his real 
meaning is doubtful. One of the most glaring 
blunders, " idol " for " old," is obviously due to 
the printer, and a more careful comparison with 
the Latin would have easily removed them all. 
But at seventy-six a little laxity may be pardoned, 
and these were the only Oxford lectures which 
Froude himself prepared for the press. The 
publication of English Seamen and the Council 
of Trent was posthumous. 

Between 1867 and 1893 Froude had become 
more favourable to Erasmus, or more sympathetic 
with his point of view. It was not that he admired 
Luther less. On the contrary, his Protestant con- 
victions grew stronger with years, and to the last he 
raised his voice against the Anglo-Catholic revival. 
But he seemed to feel with more force the saying 
of Erasmus that ** the sum of religion is peace." 
He translated and read out to his class the whole 
of the satiric dialogue held at the gate of Paradise 
between St. Peter and Julius II., in which the wars 
of that Pontiff are ruthlessly flagellated, and the 
wicked old man threatens to take the celestial 
city by storm. Erasmus, averse as he was from 
violent measures, had no lack of courage, and in 
his own name he told the truth about the most 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 409 

dignified ecclesiastics. No artifices imposed upon 
him, and he acknowledged no master but Christ. 
He translated the arch-sceptic Lucian, about 
whom Froude has himself written a delightful 
essay. " I ^ish," said Froude, " I wish more 
of us read Lucian now. He was the greatest 
man by far outside the Christian Church in the 
second century." Lucian lived in an age when 
miracles the most grotesque were supported by 
witnesses the most serious, and when, as he said, 
the one safeguard was an obstinate incredulity, 
the ineradicable certainty that miracles did not 
happen. Erasmus enjoyed Lucian as a corrective 
of monkish superstition, though he himself was 
essentially Christian. A Protestant he never 
became. He lived and died in communion with 
Rome, denounced by monks as a heretic, and 
by Lutherans as a time-server. Paul HI. would 
have made him a Cardinal if his means had 
sufficed for a Prince of the Church. Standing 
between the two extremes, he saw better than 
any of his contemporaries the real proportions 
of things, and Froude's last words on the subject 
were that students would be most likely to 
understand the Reformation if they looked at 
it with the eyes of Erasmus. Small faults 
notwithstanding, there is no one who has drawn 
a more vivid, bi a more faithful, portrait of 
Erasmus than Anthony Froude. 

Of Froude in his Oxford Chair it may fairly 
be said that in a short time he fulfilled a long time^ 



4IO LIFE OF FROUDE 

and made more impression upon the under- 
graduates in a few months than Stubbs had made 
in as many years. It was not so much the love 
of learning that he inspired, though the range 
of his studies was wide, as enthusiasm for English 
history because it was the history of England. 
His subjects were really English. Erasmus knew 
England thoroughly, and would have been an 
Englishman if he could. The Council of Trent 
failed to check the Reformation, and England 
without the Reformation would have been a 
different country, if not a province of Spain. 
Fronde's lectures were events, landmarks in the 
intellectual life of Oxford, and the young men 
who came to him for advice went away not merely 
with dry facts, but with fructifying ideas. Dis- 
tasteful as modern Parliamentary politics were 
to him, the position of the British Empire in the 
world was the dominant fact in his mind, and he 
regarded Oxford as a training-ground of imperial 
statesmanship. He was not made to run in 
harness, or to act as a coach for the schools. " The 
teaching business at Oxford," he wrote to Skelton, 
after his last term, " goes at high pressure — in 
itself utterly absurd, and unsuited altogether to 
an old stager like myself. The undergraduates 
come about me in large numbers, and I have 
asserted in some sense my own freedom ; but 
one cannot escape the tyranny of the system." ^ 
This is severe, though not perhaps severer than 

Table Talk of Shirley, p. 222, 



THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 411 

the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Firth. To 
a critic from the outside it seems that Boards 
of Studies should have power to relax their 
own rules, and that the utmost possible relaxa- 
tion should ^have been granted in the case of 
Froude. A famous historian of seventy-four, 
if qualified to be a Professor at all, must be 
capable of managing his own work so that 
it may be most useful and efficient. The 
restrictions of which Froude, not alone, com- 
plained are really imcompatible with Regius Pro- 
fessorships, or at least with the patronage of the 
Crown. They imply that the teaching branch 
of the University is to be entirely controlled by 
expert specialists on the spot. A Regius Pro- 
fessor is a national institution, a public man, not 
like a college tutor, who has purely local functions 
to discharge. That is a point on which Freeman 
would have agreed with Froude, and Stubbs 
would have agreed with both of them. Froude's 
success in spite of limitations does not show that 
they were wise, but that genius surmounts ob- 
stacles and breaks the barriers which seek to 
impede it. "To my sorrow I am popular," he 
said, " and my room is crowded. I know not who 
they are, and have no means of knowing. So it 
is not satisfactory. I must alter things somehow. 
I can't yet tell how." The opportunity never 
came. But he was too old and too wise a man 
to let such things affect his happiness, and he 
was happier in Oxford than in London. " Some 



412 LIFE OF FROUDE 

of the old Dons/' he wrote, " have been rather 
touchingly kind." 

There was indeed only one chance of escaping 
Fronde's magnetism, and that was to keep out of 
his way. The charm of his company was always 
irresistible. Different as the Oxford of 1893 
was from the Oxford of 1843, young men are 
always the same, and Froude thoroughly under- 
stood them. He had enjoyed himself at Oriel, 
not as a reading recluse, but as a boy out of school, 
and he was as young in heart as ever. Strange 
is the hold that Oxford lays upon men, and not 
less strong than strange. Nothing weakens it ; 
neither time, nor distance, nor success, nor failure, 
nor the revolution of opinion, nor the deaths of 
friends. Oxford had been unjust to Froude, 
and had driven out one of her most illustrious 
sons in something like disgrace. Yet he never 
wavered in his affection for her, and after 
the many vicissitudes of his life he came back to 
Oriel with the spirits of a boy. The spells of 
Oxford, like the spells of Medea, disperse the 
weight of years. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE END 

THE lectures on Erasmus were not public; 
they were delivered in Froude's private house 
at Cherwell Edge, and attended only by members 
of the University reading for the Modern History 
School. His public lectures on the Council of 
Trent and on English seamen had been so much 
crowded by men and women, young and old, that 
candidates for honours in history were scarcely able 
to find room. Nothing could be more honourable 
to Froude, or to Oxford, than his enthusiastic 
reception by his old University at the close of his 
brilliant and laborious career. But it was too 
much for him. Like Voltaire in Paris, he was 
stifled with flowers. His twentieth discourse 
on Erasmus begins with the pathetic sentence, 
** This will be my last lecture, for the life of 
Erasmus was drawing to an end." So was his 
own. His final task in this world was the prepara- 
tion of Erasmus for the press. He had been all 
his life accustomed to work at his own time, and 
the strain of living by rule at Oxford had told 
upon him more than he knew. Before the end 
of the summer term in 1894 he left Oxford for 

413 



414 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Devonshire, worn out and broken down. '' Educa- 
tion," he wrote in his last letter to Skelton, " like 
so much else in these days, has gone mad, and 
has turned into a large examination mill." He 
was so much exhausted that he could not go again 
to Norway with Lord Ducie,^ though with char- 
acteristic pluck he half thought of paying another 
visit to Sir George Grey in New Zealand. But 
it was not to be. During the summer his strength 
failed, and it became known that the disorder 
was incurable. With philosophic calmness he 
awaited the inevitable close, feeling, as he had 
always felt, that he was in the hands of God. 
His religion, very deep, constant, and genuine, 
was not a spiritual emotion, nor a dogmatic creed, 
but a calm and steady confidence that, whatever 
weak mortals might do, the Judge of all the earth 
would do right. " It is impossible," said Emerson, 
whom he loved and admired, "for a man not to 
be always praying." The relations of such men 
with the unseen are an inseparable part of their 
daily lives. Froude had no more sympathy with 
the self-complacent "agnosticism" of modern 
thought than he had with Catholic authority or 
ecstatic revivalism. To fear God and to keep His 
commandments was with him the whole duty of 
man. The materialistic hypothesis he rejected as 

^ "Ducie wanted me to go to Norway with him, salmon- 
fishing ; but I didn't feel that I could do justice to the oppor- 
tunity. In the debased state to which I am reduced, if I 
hooked a thirty-pound salmon, I should only pray him to get 
off." — Table Talk of Shirley, pp. 222, 223. 



THE END 415 

incredible, explaining nothing, meaning nothing, 
a presumptuous attempt to put ignorance in the 
place of knowledge. 

His soul had always dwelt apart. His early 
training did '^ not encourage spiritual sympathy, 
and, except in his books, he habitually kept 
silence on ultimate things. But he had always 
thought of them ; and as he lay dying, in almost 
the last moments of consciousness, he repeated 
clearly to himself those great, those superhuman 
lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of 
Macbeth between his wife's death and his own. 

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
To the last syllable of recorded time, 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ; 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player. 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more. 

Still later he murmured, " Shall not the Judge 
of all the earth do right ? " 

He died on the 20th of October, 1894, and was 
buried at Salcombe in his beloved Devonshire 
not far from his beloved sea. He " made his ever- 
lasting mansion upon the beached verge of the 
salt flood." By his own particular desire he was 
described on his tombstone as Regius Professor 
of Modern History at Oxford, so deeply did he 
feel the complete though tardy recognition of 
the place he had made for himself among English 



4i6 LIFE OF FROUDE 

historians. Otherwise he was the most unassum- 
ing of men^ simple and natural in manner, 
never putting himself forward, patient under 
the most hostile criticism which did not impugn 
his personal veracity. Although the malice of 
Freeman did once provoke him to a retort the 
more deadly because it was restrained, he suffered 
in silence all the detraction which followed the 
reminiscences and the biography of Carlyle. His 
temper was singularly placable, and he bore no 
malice. His father and his eldest brother had 
not treated him wisely or kindly. But neither 
of Hurrell Froude nor of the Archdeacon did he 
ever speak except with admiration and respect. 
His early training hardened him, and perhaps 
accounts for the indifference to cruelty which 
sometimes disfigures his pages. He did not know 
what a mother's affection was before he had a 
wife and children of his own. Before he became 
an honour to his family he was regarded as 
a disgrace to it, and not until the first two 
volumes of the History appeared did his father 
believe that there was any good in him. Yet 
the Archdeacon was always his ideal clergy- 
man, and the Church of England as it stood 
before the Oxford Movement was his model com- 
munion. With the Evangelical party, represented 
to him by his Irish friend, Mr. Cleaver, he 
had sympathetic relations, and practical, though 
not doctrinal, agreement. His temporary lean- 
ing towards Tractarianism was no more than 



THE END 417 

personal admiration for Newman, and he took 
orders not because he was a High Churchman, 
but because he was a Fellow. Yet it was in 
some respects a fortunate accident, which, by 
shutting him^ out from other professions, drove 
him into literature. Fiction he soon learned 
to avoid, for his early experiments in it were 
failures, and in later years his least successful 
book, with all its eloquence, was The Two Chiefs 
of Dunboy. As an historical writer he has few 
superiors, and his essays are among the most 
delightful in our tongue. To analyse his style 
is as difficult as not to feel the charm of it. It is 
as smooth as the motion of a ship sailing on a calm 
sea, and yet it is never flat nor tame. 

Although Froude, like Newman, belonged to the 
Oriel school, he has a spirit which is not of any 
school, which breathes from the wide ocean and the 
liquid air. He wrote, for all his scholarly grace, 
like a man of flesh and blood, not a pedant nor a 
doctrinaire. Impartial he never was, nor pretended 
to be. Dramatic he could not help being, and yet 
his own opinions were seldom concealed. Three 
or four main propositions were at the root of his 
mind. He held the Reformation to be the greatest 
and most beneficent change in modern history. 
He believed the English race to be the finest in the 
world. He disbelieved in equality, and in Parlia- 
mentary government. Essentially an aristocrat 
in the proper sense of the term, he cherished the 
doctrine of submission to a few fit persons, qualified 
(2310) 27 



4i8 LIFE OF FROUDE 

for authority by training and experience. These 
ideas run through all Froude's historical writing, 
which takes from them its trend and colour. 
Whatever else the male Tudors may have been, 
they were emphatically men ; and even Elizabeth, 
whom Froude did not love, had a commanding 
spirit. Except poor priest-ridden Mary, who had 
a Spanish mother and a Spanish husband, they 
did not brook control, and no one was ever more 
conscious of being a king than Henry VIII. To 
him, as to Elizabeth, the Reformation was not 
dogmatic but practical, the subjection of the 
Church to the State. The struggle between Pope 
and sovereign had to be fought out before the 
struggle between sovereign and Parliament could 
begin. 

Liberals thought that Froude would not have 
been on the side of the Parliament, and' they joined 
High Churchmen in attacking him. Spiritual and 
democratic power were to him equally obnoxious. 
He delighted in Plato's simile of the ship, where 
the majority are nothing, and the captain rules. 
His opinions were not popular, except his dislike 
for the Church of Rome. He is read partly for his 
exquisite diction, and partly for the patriotic fervour 
with which he rejoices in the achievements of 
England, especially on sea. Rossetti's fine burden : 

Lands are swayed by a king on a throne, 
The sea hath no king but God alone : 

might be a motto for the title-page of Froude. The 



THE END 419 

fallacy that brilliant writers are superficial ac- 
counts for much of the prejudice in academic circles 
against which Froude had to contend. To him of 
all men it was inapplicable, for no historian studied 
original documents with greater zest. That he 
did not know his period nobody could pretend. 
He knew it so much better than his critics that 
few of them could even criticise him intelligently. 
That he was not thoroughly acquainted with the 
periods preceding his own may be more plausibly 
argued. There must of course be some limit. 
The siege of Troy can be told without mention 
of Leda's egg. But if Froude had given a 
little more time to Henry VII., and all that 
followed the Battle of Bosworth, he would have 
approached the fall of Wolsey and the rise of 
Cromwell with a more thorough understanding of 
cause and effect. His mind moved with great 
rapidity, and went so directly to the point that 
the circumstances were not always fully weighed. 
It is possible to see the truth too clearly, with- 
out allowance for drawbacks and qualifications. 
The important fact about Henry, for instance, 
is that he was a statesman who had to provide 
for a peaceful succession. But he was also a 
wilful, headstrong, arbitrary man, spoiled from his 
cradle by flatterers, and determined to have his 
own way. Froude saw the absurdity of the Blue- 
beard delusion, and did immense service in 
exposing it. He would have given no handle to 
his Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic enemies if 



420 LIFE OF FROUDE 

he had acknowledged that there was an explana- 
tion of the error. He was sometimes carried away 
by his own eloquence, and his convictions grew 
stronger as he expressed them, until the facts on the 
other side looked so small that they were ignored. 

History deals, and can only deal, with con- 
sequences and results. Motives and intentions, 
however interesting, belong to another sphere. 
Henry and Cromwell, Mary and Pole, Elizabeth 
and Cecil, are tried in Froude's pages by the 
simple test of what they did, or failed to 
do, for England. Froude detested and despised 
the cosmopolitan philosophy which regards 
patriotic sentiment as a relic of barbarism. He 
was not merely an historian of England, but 
also an English historian; and holding Fisher to 
be a traitor, he did not hesitate to justify the 
execution of a pious, even saintly man. Fisher 
would no doubt have said that it was far more 
important to preserve the Catholic faith in England 
than to keep England independent of Spain. 
Froude would have replied that unless the nation 
punished those whe sought for the aid of Spanish 
troops against their own countrymen, she would 
soon cease to be a nation at all. His critics evaded 
the point, and took refuge in talk about bloody 
tyrants wreaking vengeance upon harmless old 
men. 

If patriotism be not a disqualification for an 
historian, Froude had none. Like every other 
writer, he made mistakes. But he was laborious 



THE END 421 

in research, a master of narrative, with a genius 
for seizing dramatic points. Above all, he had 
imagination, without which the vastest know- 
ledge is as a ship without sails, or a bird 
without wings. His objects, even his pre- 
judices, were frankly avowed, and his prejudices 
gave way to fresh facts or reasons. The records 
at Simancas, for instance, completely changed, 
and changed for the worse, his estimate of 
Queen Elizabeth's character, and he admitted 
it at once with his transparent candour. To 
defend Froude against mendacity seems like an 
insult to his memory, for if he loved anything it 
was truth, though he sometimes spoke in a cynical 
way about the difficulty of attaining it. But 
such monstrous charges were made against him 
when he could no longer reply for himself that 
I may be forgiven for quoting an authority which 
will command general respect. Mr. Andrew 
Lang is as scrupulously accurate in statement 
as he is brilliantly felicitous in style. He has 
studied the history of the sixteenth century, 
especially in Scotland, and he disagrees with 
Froude on many, if not on most, of the points in dis- 
pute. Yet this is Mr. Lang's deliberate judgment : 
"I have found Mr. Froude often in error ; often, 
as I think, misunderstanding, misquoting, omitting 
and even adding," but I have never once seen 
reason to suspect him of conscious misrepresenta- 
tion, of knowingly giving a false impression. . . . 
It is easy to show that Mr. Froude erred contrary 



422 LIFE OF FROUDE 

to his bias on occasion, and it must never be for- 
gotten that he did what no consciously dishonest 
historian could possibly do. He deposited at the 
British Museum copies, in the original Spanish, 
of the documents, very difficult of access, which 
he used in his History. By aid of these tran- 
scripts, we can find him slipping into errors, and 
his action in presenting the country with the 
means of correcting his mistakes proves beyond 
doubt that he did not consciously make mistakes. 
There is no way in which this conclusion can be 
evaded. No historian was more honest than 
Mr. Froude, though few or none of his merit have 
been so fallible." 

How many historians of his merit have there 
been ? He had no contemporary rival in England, 
for Carlyle and Macaulay belonged to a previous 
generation. There was certainly no one living 
when Froude died who could have written the 
famous passage in the first chapter of his History 
about the decay of medisevalism : 

" For, indeed, a change was coming upon the 
world, the meaning and direction of which even 
still are hidden from us, a change from era to era. 
The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were 
broken up ; old things were passing away, and 
the faith and the life of ten centuries were dis- 
solving like a dream. Chivalry was dying ; the 
abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble 
into ruins ; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, 
convictions of the old world were passing away. 



THE END 423 

never to return. A new continent had risen up 
beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, 
inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite 
abyss of immeasurable space ; and the fair earth 
itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to 
be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the 
universe. In the fabric of habit which they had 
so laboriously built for themselves, mankind 
were to remain no longer. And now it is all gone 
— like an unsubstantial pageant faded ; and 
between us and the old English themselves a gulf 
of mystery which the prose of the historian will 
never adequately bridge. They cannot come 
to us, and our imagination can but feebly pene- 
trate to them. Only among the aisles of the 
cathedrals, only before the silent figures sleeping 
on the tombs, some faint conceptions float before 
us of what these men were when they were alive, 
and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that 
peculiar creation of the middle age, which falls 
upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world." 

Although Froude cared little for music, the 
rhythm of his sentences is musical, and the organ- 
note of the opening words in the quotation carries 
a reminiscence of Tacitus which will not escape the 
classical reader. That is literary artifice, though 
a very high form of it. The real merit of the 
paragraph is not so much its eloquence as its insight 
into the depth of things. Many respectable his- 
torians see only the outward lineaments. Froude 
saw the nation's heart and soul. It was the same 



424 LIFE OF FROUDE 

with the great man whose biographer Froude 
became. Carlyle's faults would have been im- 
possible in a character mean or small. They 
were the defects of his qualities, those 

Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise, 

which do not wait to appear till the last scene of 
life. Now that more than twenty years have passed 
since the final volumes of the Life were published, 
it may be said with confidence that Carlyle owes 
almost as much to Froude as to his own writings 
for his high and enduring fame. * ' Though the lives 
of the Carlyles were not happy," says Froude, " yet, 
if we look at them from the beginning to the end, 
they were grandly beautiful. Neither of them pro- 
bably under other conditions would have risen to 
as high an excellence as in fact they each actually 
achieved ; and the main question is not how happy 
men and women have been in this world, but what 
they have made of themselves." ^ The loftier a 
man's own view of mental conceptions and sub- 
lunary things, the more will he admire Carlyle as 
described by Froude. The same Carlyle who made 
a ridiculous fuss about trifles confronted the 
real evils and trials of life with a dignity, courage, 
and composure which inspire humble reverence 
rather than vulgar admiration. Froude rightly 
felt that Carlyle's petty grumbles, often most 
amusing, throw into bright and strong relief his 
splendid generosity to his kinsfolk, his manly pride 

^ Carlyle's Early Life, i. 381. 



THE END 425 

in writing what was good instead of what was 
lucrative, his anxiety that Mih should not perceive 
what he lost in the first volume of The French 
Revolution. Whenever a crisis came, Carlyle stood 
the test. The greater the occasion, the better he 
behaved. One thing Froude did not give, and 
perhaps no biographer could. Carlyle was essen- 
tially a humourist. He laughed heartily at other 
people, and not less heartily at himself. When 
he was letting himself go, and indulging freely 
in the most lurid denunciations of all and sundry, 
he would give a peculiar and most significant 
chuckle which cannot be put into print. It was 
a warning not to take him literally, which has 
too often passed unheeded. He has been com- 
pared with Swift, but he was not really a mis- 
anthropist, and no man loved laughter more, or 
could excite more uproarious merriment in others. 
I remember a sober Scotsman, by no means 
addicted to frivolous merriment, telling me that 
he had come out of Carlyle' s house in physical 
pain from continuous laughter at an imaginary 
dialogue between a missionary and a negro which 
Carlyle had conducted entirely himself. 

Carlyle, it must be remembered, knew Froude' s 
historical methods quite as well as he knew 
Froude. It was because he knew them, and 
approved of thenl, that he asked Froude to be 
the historian of Cheyne Row. Fronde's devo- 
tion to him had indeed been singular. During 
the last decade of his life Carlyle was very 



426 LIFE OF FROUDE 

feeble^ and required constant care. He came to 
lean upon Froude more and more, requiring his 
company in walks, and even in omnibuses, until 
Froude almost ceased to be his own master. The 
lecturing tour in the United States and the 
political visits to South Africa were permitted, 
because they were thought right. But Frase/s 
Magazine had to be given up, partly that employ- 
ment might be found for a young man in whom 
Carlyle was interested, and the project for a new 
history of Charles V. was perforce abandoned It 
has been said, though not by any one who knew 
the facts, that Froude profited in a pecuniary 
sense by exchanging history for biography. The 
exact opposite is the truth. From 1866 to 1869, 
the last years of his great book, Froude received 
from Messrs. Longman about fourteen hundred 
pounds a year, including his salary as editor of 
Fraser, which he relinquished at Carlyle' s bidding. 
From 1877 to 1884 he did not receive more than 
seven hundred. Two volumes of history brought 
in about as much as three of biography, and there 
is no reason to suppose that Charles V. would have 
proved less popular than Henry VI 1 1, or Elizabeth. 
Froude was unusually prosperous and successful 
as a man of letters, though it is of course impossible 
for the highest literary work to be adequately paid. 
He had to deal with liberal publishers, and after 
1856 his position as a writer was assured. The 
idea that necessity drove him to fill his pockets at 
the expense of a dead friend's reputation is as 



THE END 427 

preposterous in his case as it would have been 
in Lockhart's or Stanley's. 

Had Froude been the cynic he is often called, 
he would have borne with callous indifference, as 
he did bear in dignified silence, the attacks made 
upon him for his revelations of Carlyle. But 
Froude was not what he seemed. Behind his 
stately presence, and lofty manner, and calmly 
audacious speech, there was a singularly sensitive 
nature. He would do what he thought right with 
perfect fearlessness, and without a moment's 
hesitation. When the consequences followed he 
was not always prepared for them, and people who 
were not worth thinking about could give him 
pain. Human beings are composite creatures, 
and the feminine element in man is more obvious 
than the masculine element in woman. Froude 
had a feminine disposition to be guided by feeling, 
and to remember old grievances as vividly as if 
they had happened the day before. He was also a 
typical west countryman in habit of mind, as well 
as in face, figure, and speech. His beautiful voice, 
exquisitely modulated, never raised in talk, was 
thoroughly Devonian. So too were his imperfect 
sense of the effect produced by what he said upon 
ordinary minds, and his love, which might almost 
be called mischievous, of giving small electric 
shocks. In the case of Carlyle, however, the out- 
cry was wholly unexpected, and for a time he was 
distressed, though never mastered, by it. What 
he could not understand, what it took him a long 



428 LIFE OF FROUDE 

time to live down, was that friends who really knew 
him should believe him capable of baseness and 
treachery. Now that it is all over, that Fronde's 
biography has taken its place in classical literature, 
and that Mrs. Carlyle's letters are acknowledged to 
be among the best in the language, the whole story 
appears like a nightmare. But it was real enough 
twenty years ago, when people who never read 
books of any kind thought that Froude was the 
name of the man that whitewashed Henry VIII. 
and blackened Carlyle. Froude would probably 
have been happier if he had turned upon his assail- 
ants once for all, as he once finally and decisively 
turned upon Freeman. Freeman, however, was 
an open enemy. A false friend is a more difficult 
person to dispose of, and even to deny the 
charge of deliberate treachery hardly consistent 
with self-respect. Long before Froude died the 
clamour against him had by all decent people been 
dropped. But he himself continued to feel the 
effect of it until he became Professor of History 
at Oxford. That rehabilitated him, where only he 
required it, in his own eyes. It was a public 
recognition by the country through the Prime 
Minister of the honour he had reflected upon 
Oxford since his virtual expulsion in 1849, and 
he felt himself again. From that time the whole 
incident was blotted from his mind, and he forgot 
that some of his friends had forgotten the meaning 
of friendship. The last two years of his life were 
indeed the fullest he had ever known. Forty-two 



THE END 429 

lectures in two terms at the age of seventy-four 
are a serious undertaking. Happily he knew 
the sixteenth century so well that the process of 
refreshing his memory was rather a pleasure than 
a task, and be could have written good English in 
his sleep. Yet few even of his warmest admirers 
expected that in a year and a half he would 
compose three volumes which both for style and 
for substance are on a level with the best work 
of his prime. It was less surprising, and intensely 
characteristic, that his subjects should be the 
Reformation and the sea. 

Froude's religious position is best stated in his 
own words, written when he was in South Africa, 
to a member of his family : 

'' I know by sad experience much of what is 
passing in your mind. Although my young days 
were chequered with much which I look back 
on with regret and shame, still I believe I always 
tried to learn what was true, and when I had 
found it to stick to it. The High Church theology 
was long attractive to me, but then I found, or 
thought I found, that it had no foundation, and 
indeed that very few of its professors in their 
heart of hearts believed what they were saying. 
Apostolic Succession, Sacramental Grace, and the 
rest of it, are very pretty, but are they facts ? 
Is it a fact that* any special mysterious power 
is communicated by a Bishop's hands ? Is it a 
fact that a child's nature is changed by water and 
words — or that the bread when it is broken ceases 



430 LIFE OF FROUDE 

to be bread ? We cannot tell that it is not so, you 
say. But can we tell that it is so ? and we ought 
to be able to tell before we believe it. All that 
fell away from me when I came in contact with 
the Cleavers and their friends. Their views 
never commended themselves to me wholly ; but 
at least they were spiritual and not material. 
And election is sl fact, although they express it 
oddly — and so is reprobation — and so is what 
they say of free will, and so is conversion. It is 
true that we bring natures into the world which 
are moulded by circumstances and by their own 
tendencies, as clay in the hands of the potter. 
Look round you and see that some are made for 
honour and some for dishonour. So far I agree 
with the Evangelicals still, and I agree too with 
them that if what they call faith — that is, a distinct 
conviction of sin, a resolution to say to oneself 
'Sammy, my boy, this won't do,'^ a perception and 
love for what is right and good, and a loathing of 
the old self — can be put into one, and by the grace 
of God we see that it can be and is — the whole 
nature is changed, is what we call regenerated. 
This is certain — and it is to me certain also that 
the world and we who live in it, with all these 
mysterious conditions of our being, are no creation 
of accident or blind law. We were created for 

1 The reference is to Thackeray's story of a hairdresser named 
Samuelj who remarked j " Mr. Thackeray, there comes a time in 
the life of every man when he says to himself, ' Sammy, my 
boy, this won't do.'" The story was an especial favourite of 
Froude's. 



THE END 431 

purposes unknown to us by Almighty God, who 
is using us and training us for His own objects — 
objects wholly unconceivable by us, but never- 
theless which we know to exist, for Intelligence 
never works but for an end. 

" Of other things which are popularly called 
religion, I have my opinion positive and negative. 
But religion to me is not opinion — it is certainty. 
I cannot govern my actions or guide my deepest 
convictions by probabilities. The laws which 
we are to obey and the obligations to obey them 
are part of my being of which I am as sure as that 
I am alive. The things to argue about are by 
their nature uncertain, and therefore it is to me 
inconceivable that in them can lie Religion. I 
cannot tell whether these thoughts will be of any 
help to you. But it is better, in my judgment, 
to remain a proselyte of the gate — resolute to 
remain there till one receives a genuine conviction 
of some truths beyond — than for imagined relief 
from the pain of suspense to take up by an act 
of will a complete system of belief. Catholic or 
Calvinistic, and insist to one's own soul that it 
is, was, and shall be the whole and complete 
truth. Some people do this — deliberately blind 
their eyes, and because they never see again 
declare loudly that, no one else can see. Other 
people, less happy, find by experience that they 
cannot believe what they have taken to in this 
way, and fly for a change to the next theory 
and then to the next. I remain for myself 



432 LIFE OF FROUDE 

unconvinced of much which is generally called 
the essential part of things ; but convinced with 
all my heart of what I regard as essential." 

Froude made no secret of his religious opinions, 
and they may be collected from his numerous 
books, especially perhaps from The Oxford Counter- 
Reformation. A curious paper, first published in 
1879, called "A Siding at a Railway Station," 
is one of his most direct utterances on the 
subject. It will be found in the fourth series 
of Short Studies, and is in many respects the most 
remarkable of them all. ** Some years ago," it 
begins, ** I was travelling by railway, no matter 
whence or whither." The railway is life, and the 
siding at which the train was suddenly stopped is 
the end that awaits all travellers through this 
world. The examination of the luggage is the 
judgment which will be passed upon all human 
actions hereafter. Wages received are placed on 
one side, and value to mankind of services rendered 
on the other. Naturally working men come out 
best. The worst show is made by idle and luxu- 
rious grandees. Authors occupy a middle posi- 
tion, and in Froude' s own books " chapter after 
chapter vanished away, leaving the paper clean as 
if no compositor had ever laboured in setting type 
for it. Pale and illegible became the fine-sounding 
paragraphs on which I had secretly prided myself. 
A few passages, however, survived here and there 
at long intervals. They were those on which I had 
laboured least and had almost forgotten, or those, 



THE END 433 

as I observed in one or two instances, which had 
been selected for special reprobation in the weekly 
journals." The hit at The Saturday Review is 
amusing enough^ and Froude goes on to plead 
successfully that though he may have been ignor- 
antj prejudiced, or careless, no charge of dishonesty 
could be established against him. Apart from his 
own personal case, the allegory means little more 
than the gospel of work which is the noblest part 
in the teaching of Carlyle. Titled personages come 
off badly, and the most ridiculous figure in the 
motley throng is an Archbishop. Not much sym- 
pathy is shown with any one, except with a widow 
who hopes to rejoin her husband, and sympathy 
is all that Froude can give her. 

Of Froude's friendships much has been said. 
They were numerous, and drawn from very 
different classes. Beginning at Oxford, they in- 
creased rather than diminished throughout his 
life, notwithstanding the gaps which death in- 
evitably and inexorably made. To one Fellow 
of Exeter who stood by him in his troubles, George 
Butler, afterwards Canon of Winchester, he re- 
mained always attached. Dean Stanley throughout 
life he loved, and another clerical friend, Cowley 
Powles. Of the many persons who felt Clough's 
early death as an irreparable calamity there was 
hardly one who felt it more than Froude. His 
affectionate reverence for Newman was proof 
against a mental and moral antagonism which 
could not be bridged. After Kingsley's death be 
(3310) 28 



434 LIFE OF FROUDE 

wrote, from the Molt, to Mrs. Kingsley : " Dearest 
Fanny, — You tell me not to write, so I will say 
nothing beyond telling you how deeply I am 
affected by your thought of me. The old times are 
as fresh in my mind as in yours. You and Charles 
were the best and truest friends I ever had. We 
shall soon be all together again. God bless you 
now and in eternity. 

"Your affectionate J. A. Froude." 

" Cowley Powles is here. It was he who first 
took me to Eversley." 

It was when he came to London that Froude 
enlarged the circle of his friends, Carlyle being 
the greatest and the chief. Among the con- 
tributors to Eraser's Magazine those whom he 
knew best were the late Sir John Skelton, 
** Shirley," and the present Sir Theodore Martin, 
the biographer of the Prince Consort, whom 
some still prefer to associate with those delightful 
parodies, the Bon GauUier Ballads. The enumera- 
tion of Froude' s London acquaintances would 
be merely a social chronicle, with the supplement 
of some names, such as General Cluseret's, quite 
outside the ordinary groove. He could get on 
with any one, and he was interested in every 
one who had interesting qualities. After his 
second marriage his dinner-parties in Onslow 
Gardens were famous for their brilliancy and 
charm. His magnetic personality drew from 
people whatever they had, while his ease of man- 
ner made them feel at home. It was perhaps 



THE END 435 

because he never pretended to know anything 
that only scholars realised how much he knew, 
and that he seemed to be not so much a man of 
letters as a man of the world. Of all the friends 
he made in iater life there was not one that he 
valued more highly than Lord Wolseley. *' I 
have been staying/' he wrote to his daughter, 
from South Africa, " with Sir Garnet Wolseley 
and his brilliant staff. It was worth a voyage to 
South Africa to make so intimate an acquaintance 
with him." After his second return from the 
Cape, when his social life in London was taken 
up again, with his eldest daughter in her step- 
mother's place, there were added to the military 
and naval officers he had met, the Irish Protestants, 
who regarded him as their champion, and the 
wide circle of his ordinary associates, an Africander 
contingent, made up of all parties in that troubled 
area. There were, in fact, few phases of human 
life with which Froude was not famihar, from 
Devonshire fishermen to Cabinet Ministers. Al- 
though he knew and admired Mr. Chamberlain, 
his greatest poUtical friends were Lord Carnarvon 
and Lord Derby, with whom he almost invariably 
agreed. The man of science whom, after his own 
brother, he knew best, was Tyndall. Men of 
letters were familiar to him in every degree. 
Among the houses' where he was a frequent and 
welcome guest were Knowsley, Highclere, Tort- 
worth, and Castle Howard. In his own family 
there were troubles and bereavements. His 



436 LIFE OF FROUDE 

eldest son, who died before him, gave him much 
trouble and anxiety. His second daughter died 
of consumption a few months after her step- 
mother, while he was in South Africa alone. 
Otherwise, his relations with his children were 
perfect and unbroken, for no father was more 
beloved and adored. Indeed, all intelligent chil- 
dren delighted in his company, because they could 
not help understanding him, and yet he paid 
them the acceptable compliment of talking to 
them as if they were grown up. 

There is nothing in the world more evanescent 
than good conversation. Froude was one of the 
best and most agreeable talkers of his day. He 
could talk to old and young, to men, women, 
and children, to Devonshire seamen or labourers, 
to the most highly cultivated society of Oxford 
or London, with equal ease and equal enjoyment. 
He never tried to monopolise the conversation, 
and yet somehow the chief share fell naturally 
to him. If he were bored, he could be as silent 
as the grave. But when his interest was roused, 
and most things roused it, he always had some- 
thing pointed and forcible to say. He was not 
always a sympathetic hearer. Once he sat be- 
tween two extremely intellectual women who 
considered themselves leaders of advanced thought. 
When they left the room after dinner he turned 
to a friend of mine, and said simply, " I think 
all these bigots ought to be burnt." Such de- 
plorable intolerance was happily rare. Less rare, 



THE END 437 

perhaps, were his irresistible sense of the ludic- 
rous and irrepressible tendency to sarcasm. Of a 
famous clergyman he said, '' At least they have 
not put him into a bishop's apron, the emblem of 
our first parents' shame." " What can education 
do for a man," he once asked, " except enable him 
to tell a lie in five ways instead of one ? " As a 
rule, Froude, like most good talkers, listened well, 
and responded readily. If he had not Carlyle's 
rich, exuberant humour, he was also without the 
prophet's leaning to dogmatism and anathema. 
Sardonic irony was his nearest approach to an 
offensive weapon, and even in that he was sparing. 
But he had a look which seemed to say, ** Don't 
offer me any theories, or creeds, or speculations, 
for I have tried them all." 

Perhaps I may be permitted in this connection 
to describe my one and only experience of Froude 
and his ways. It was after dinner, and the talk 
had fallen into the hands, or the mouth, of an 
eminent administrator, who seemed to be a pillar, 
a model of talent and virtue. His language was 
copious, his subject " schoolmaster Bishops," 
and the services they had rendered to the Church 
of England. Bishop Blomfield, for example, had 
procured the appointment of the Ecclesiastical 
Commission. There might, for aught we knew, 
be endless examples, and the prospect was appal- 
ling. The host was a Roman Catholic, and the 
guests were not ecclesiastical. Froude came to 
the rescue. In a gentle voice, and with the air of 



438 LIFE OF FROUDE 

an anxious inquirer, he asked whether Dr. Blom- 
field had happened to acquaint the Commissioners 
with the nature and extent of his own emoluments. 
Then, without pausing for a reply, he added, 
still gently, *' Because it always used to be said 
that there were onty two persons who knew what 
the Bishop of London's income was ; himself 
and the devil." The remark may not have been 
a new one. It was not offered as such, but it 
served its purpose, for the interrupted lecture 
was never resumed. 

Froude's vast reading and his wide human 
experience enabled him to hold his own in any 
company, but he never paraded his knowledge, 
or lay in wait to trip people up. Although the 
prospect of going out worried him, and his first 
impulse was to refuse an invitation, he enjoyed 
society when he was in it, being neither vain nor 
shy. At Oxford he could not dine out. Late 
hours interfered with his work. But he was 
hospitable both to tutors and to undergraduates, 
liking to show himself at home in the old place. 
Except for the failure of his health, perhaps in 
spite of it, his enjoyment of his Oxford professor- 
ship was unmixed. He did not hold it long 
enough to feel the brevity of the generations 
which makes the real sadness of the place. Many 
ghosts he must have seen, but he had reached 
an age when men are prepared for them, and 
his academic career in the forties had come to 
such an unfortunate end that comparison of the 



THE END 439 

past with the present can only have been cheerful 
and honourable. He found a Provost of Oriel and 
a Rector of Exeter who could read his books, 
and appreciate them, without prejudice against 
the author. But indeed, though he was capable 
of being profoundly bored, he was at his ease in 
the most diverse societies, and no form of con- 
versation not absolutely foolish came amiss to 
him. He had read so many books, and seen so 
much of the world, he held such strong opinions, 
and expressed them with such placid freedom, 
that he never failed to command attention, or 
to deserve it. Contemptuous enough, perhaps 
too contemptuous, of human frailties, he at least 
knew how to make them entertaining, and his 
urbane irony dissolved pretentious egoism. 

It is a familiar saying that men's characters and 
habits are formed in the earliest years of their 
lives. Froude was by profession and by choice a 
man of letters. He loved writing, and whatever 
he read, or heard, or saw, turned itself without 
effort into literary shape. The occupations and 
amusements of his life can be traced in his Short 
Studies. But he had not been reared in a literary 
atmosphere. He had been brought up among horses 
and dogs, with grooms and keepers, on the moors 
and the sea. He describes it himself as " the old 
wild scratch way, when the keeper was the rabbit- 
catcher, and sporting was enjoyed more for the 
adventure than for the bag." He never lost his 
love of sport, and he gave his own son the sam^ 



440 LIFE OF FROUDE 

training he had himself. Even in his last illness 
he liked the young man to go out shooting, and 
always asked what sport he had had. His own 
father had been a country gentleman, as well as 
a clergyman, and his brothers, while their health 
lasted, all rode to hounds. He himself never 
forgot how he had been put by Robert on a 
horse without a saddle, and thrown seventeen 
times in one afternoon without hurting himself 
on the soft Devonshire grass. He went out 
shooting with his brothers long before he could 
himself shoot. For his first two years at Oxford 
he had done little except ride, and boat, and 
play tennis. At Plas Gwynant he was as much 
out of doors as in, and even to the last his 
physical enjoyment of an expedition in the open 
air was intense. Yet this was the same man who 
could sit patiently down at Simancas in a room 
full of dusty, disorderly documents, ill written in 
a foreign tongue, and patiently decipher them all. 
If a healthy mind in a healthy body be, as the 
Roman satirist says, the greatest of blessings, 
Froude was certainly blessed. The hardness of 
his frame, and the soundness of his nerves, gave 
him the imperturbable temper which Marlborough 
is said to have valued more than money itself. 
Of money Froude was always careful, and he was 
most judicious in his investments. He held the 
Puritan view of luxury as a thing bad in itself, and 
the parent of evil, relaxing the moral fibre. The 
sternness of temperament|^he£had inherited from 



THE END 441 

his father was concealed by an easy, sociable dis- 
position, inclined to make the best of the present, 
but it was always there. In the struggle between 
Knox and Mary Stuart all his sympathies are with 
Knox, who ''had the root of the matter in him, 
Calvinism and the moral law. Few imaginative 
artists could have resisted as he did the temptation 
to draw a dazzling picture of Mary's charms and 
accomplishments, scholarship and statesmanship, 
beauty and wit. Froude felt of her as Jehu felt 
of Jezebel, that she was the enemy of the people 
of God. So with his own contemporaries, such 
as Carlyle's " copper captain," Louis Napoleon. 
He was never dazzled by the blaze of the Tuileries 
and the glare of temporary success. He might 
have said after Boileau, J'appelle un chat un chat, 
et Louis un fripon. 

The peculiarity of Froude's nature was to 
combine this firm foundation with superficial 
layers of cynicism, paradox, and irony, as in his 
apology for the rack, his character of Henry VHL, 
his defence of Cranmer's churchmanship, and 
Parker's. He shared with Carlyle the belief that 
conventional views were sham views, and ought to 
be exposed. Ridicule, if not a test of truth, is 
at all events a weapon against falsehood, and has 
done much to clear the air of history. Froude's 
sense of humour was rather receptive than ex- 
pansive, and he did not often display it in his 
writings. Tristram Shandy he knew almost by 
heart, and he never tired of Candida, or Zadig. 



442 LIFE OF FROUDE 

Voltaire's wit and Sterne's humour have not in 
their own Hnes been surpassed. But sure as 
Froude's taste was in such matters, he did not 
himself enter the lists as a competitor. He was 
too much occupied with his narrative, or his theory, 
as the case might be, to spare time for such 
diversion by the way. He was too earnest to be 
impartial. 

Where is the impartial historian to be found ? 
Macaulay said in Hallam. The clerical editor of 
Bishop Stubbs's Letters thinks that Hallam, who 
was an Erastian, had a violent prejudice against 
the Church. His impartial historian is Stubbs, for 
the simple reason that he agrees with him. Froude 
was for England against Rome and Spain. He could 
oppose the foreign policy of an English Government 
when he thought it wrong, as in the case of the 
Crimean War, and of Disraeli's aggressive Imperi- 
alism in 1877. But the English cause in the 
sixteenth century he regarded as national and 
religious, making for freedom and independence 
of policy and thought. To be free, to understand, 
to enjoy, said Thomas Hill Green, is the claim of 
the modern spirit. Froude would not have ad- 
mitted that man in the philosophic sense was free, 
or that he could ever hope to understand the ulti- 
mate causes of things. And, though no man was 
more capable of enjoying the present moment, 
he would have sternly denied that pleasure, how- 
ever refined, could be a legitimate aim in life. 
He was a disciple of the porch, and not of the 



THE END 443 

garden. It was deeds of chivalry and endurance 
that he held up to the admiration of mankind. 
The hero of his History, William Cecil, Lord 
Burghley, was not a man of brilliant gifts or 
dazzling attainments, but a sober, solid, servant 
of duty and of the State. To most people 
Burghley is a far less interesting figure than his 
haughty and splendid sovereign, or the beautiful 
and seductive queen against whom he protected 
her. Froude judged Burghley, as he judged EUza- 
beth Tudor and Mary Stuart, by the standards 
of political integrity and personal honour. The 
secret of Froude' s influence and the source of 
his power is that beneath the attraction of his 
personality and the seductiveness of his writing 
there lay a bedrock of principle which could never 
be moved. 

Professor Sanday, who preached the first Uni- 
versity sermon at Oxford after Fronde's death, 
referred to his *' fifty years of unwearied literary 
activity." The period of course included, and 
was meant to include. The Nemesis of Faith. 
" We all know," continued Dr. Sanday, " how 
the young and ardent Churchman followed his 
reason where it seemed to lead, and sacrificed a 
Fellowship, and, as it seemed, a career, to scruples 

of conscience Now we can see that the 

difficulties which led to it were real difficulties. It 
was right and not wrong that they should be raised 
and faced." It is the fashion to regard scruples 
of conscience as morbid, and the last man who 



444 LIFE OF FROUDE 

troubled himself about a test was not a young 
and ardent Churchman, but Charles Bradlaugh. 
Froude was " ever a fighter," who wished always 
to fight fair. He preferred resigning his Fellow- 
ship to fighting for it on purely legal grounds, 
and holding it, if he could have held it, in the 
teeth of the College Statutes. More than twenty 
years elapsed before the tests which condemned 
him were abolished, and in that time there must 
have been many less orthodox Fellows than 
he. It was more than twenty years before he 
could lay aside the orders which in a rash moment 
under an evil system he had assumed. But he 
was a preacher, though a lay one, and his life 
was a struggle for the causes in which he beheved. 
Ecclesiastical controversies never really interested 
him, except so far as they touched upon national 
Ufe and character. He wished to see the work 
of the sixteenth century continued in the nine- 
teenth by the naval power and the Colonial 
possessions of England. " England " with him 
meant not merely that part of Great Britain 
which lies south of the Tweed, but all the 
dominions of the Sovereign, the British Empire 
as a whole. What Seeley called the expansion 
of England was to him the chief fact of the present, 
and the chief problem of the future. Events 
since his death have vindicated his foresight. 
He urged and predicted the Australian Federation, 
which he did not live to see. To the policy which 
impeded the Federation of South Africa he was 



THE END 445 

steadily opposed. The moral which he drew 
from his travels in Australasia, and in the West 
Indies, was the need for strengthening imperial 
ties. Lord Beaconsfield's Imperialism was not 
to his taste, ^nd he disliked every form of aggres- 
sion or pretence. While he dreaded the inter- 
vention of party leaders, and desired the Colonies 
to take the initiative themselves, he thought that 
a common tariff was the direction in which true 
Imperialism should move. Whether he was right 
or wrong is too large a question to be discussed 
here. That matter must make its own proof. 
But in raising it Froude was a pioneer, and, 
though a man of letters, saw more plainly than 
practical politicians what were the questions they 
would have to solve. He despised local jealousies, 
and took large views. Many men, perhaps most 
men, contract their horizon with advancing years. 
Froude' s vision seemed to widen. Through the 
storms and mists of passion and prejudice 
which blinded the eyes of Liberals and Conser- 
vatives fighting each other at Westminster, 
he looked to the ultimate union of all British 
subjects in an England conterminous with the 
sovereignty of the Crown. It was that England 
of which he wrote the history. It was knowledge 
of her past, and belief in her future, that inspired 
the work of his life. 

THE END 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lord, 88 
Alva, Duke of, 158, 159 
Aiagon, Queen Katharine of, ^6, 

95, 99, 100, no, 137 
Arnold, Matthew, 39, 59, 62, 129, 

145 
Arnold, Thomas, D.D, 11, 15, 

383 
Ashburton, Lady, 299, 300 
Austin, Mrs., 309 

Babington, Anthony, 165 
Barkly, Sir Henry, 254, 256, 

262, 266-268 
Beaconsfield, Lord, 2,^, 117, 133, 

150, 252, 253, 277, 278, 281, 

284, 367-375. 442, 445 
Beaton, Cardinal, 145 
Becket, Thomas, 14, 173 
Bismarck, Prince, 285 
Blomfield, Bishop, 437, 438 
Boleyn, Queen Anne, 69, 76, 95, 

100, Id, 106, 396 
Bonner, Archbishop, 107, 122 
Borroraeo, Carlo, 140 
Brand, President, 254, 256, 261, 

273 
Brewer, Prof., 176, 186 
Bright, John, 212, 281, 356 
Browning, Robert, 129 
Buckle, Henry, 67, 130, 131, 395 
Bunsen, Chevalier, 52 
Bunyan, John, 343, 344 . 
Burghley, Lord, 109, 117, 119, 

125, 143, 158, 159, 164, 400, 

401, 420, 443 
Burke, Edmund, 234, 236, 238, 

239. 243, 356, 393 



Burke, Father, 217-219, 220, 

223, 247, 354 
Burton, J. H., 172 
Bury, Prof., 131 
Butler, George, 433 
Butler, Bishop, 25, 55, 39 

Campeggio, Cardinal, 76 

Campian, Edmund, 140, 141 

Carlyle, James, 309 

Carlyle, John, 301, 302 

Carlyle, Mrs. Alexander, 302, 
304, 306-311, 331, 332 

Carlyle, Thomas, 31, 41, 46, 55 ; 
he makes Froude's acquaint- 
ance, 67 ; his judgment on the 
first chapter of The History, 
80-85 ; his verdict on the 
second chapter, 85-86 ; his 
infliuenGe upon Froude, 78, 87, 
88, 90, 94, 97, 104, 130, 132, 
133, 201, 210, 220, 227, 246, 
258, 270, 281, 301, 341, 342, 
349, 396, 397 ; his introduc- 
tion to Lady Salisbury, 117; 
his approval of Froude's 
American tour, 228 ; extract 
from letter to Mrs. Froude on, 
229 ; letter to Froude on The 
English in Ireland, 242, 243 ; 
his intimate friendship with 
Froude, 291, 292, 296, 297, 
387 ; his brilliant conversa- 
tional powers, 291 ; his treat- 
ment of Mrs. Carlyle, 293, 294 ; 
he hands over to Froude 
Mrs. Carlyle's letters and 
biographical fragments, 294 ; 



447 



448 



INDEX 



extract from letter to Froude 
regarding publication of, 294 ; 
extract from will regarding the 
Letters and Memorials and 
biography, 296, 297 ; Froude 
asked to undertake biography, 
297, 298 ; his death, 303 ; 
publication of Reminiscences, 
303 ; Froude accused of vio- 
lating his directions, 307 ; 
Froude's defence, 307, 308 ; 
Mary Carlyle attempts to 
secure another biographer, 
308 ; publication of first two 
volumes of Life, 312 ; publica- 
tion of Mrs. Carlyle's Letters 
and Memorials, 320 ; publica- 
tion of Life in London, 322 ; 
his dislike of Froude's Ccesar, 
342, 343 ; extract from letter 
to Miss D. Bromley on The 
English in Ireland, ^6y ; survey 
of character and his rela- 
tions with Froude, 423-426 
Carlyle, Mrs., 289, 290, 292, 293, 
29s, 296-309, 315, 316, 320, 

323. 427 
Carnarvon, Lord, 133, 252, 253- 
255, 258, 262, 264, 266, 269, 
273-275. 277, 278, 281, 329, 

435 

Cecil, William (see Lord Burgh- 
ley) 

Chamberlain, Mr. J., 345, 346, 

435 
Chambers, Robert, 38 
Charles II., 214, 215, 288 
Charles V., 426 
Church, Dean, 7, 19, 61 
Clare, Lord, 219, 235, 240, 241, 

244 
Cleaver, Mr., 26-30, 416 
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 39, 40, 41- 

44, 58, 59,66, 129, 130,433 
Cluseret, General, 434 
Cobden, Richard, 90, 201 
Coleridge, Rev. G. May, 37 
Coleridge, John Duke, 37 



Colley, Sir George, 269, 270 
Cook, Douglas, 224 
Cornwallis, Lord, 236, 237, 241 
Cranmer, Archbishop, roo, 107, 

108, 112, 124, 183, 400, 440 
Cromwell, Oliver, 88, 140, 201, 

213, 214, 215, 335, 365 
Cromwell, Thomas, 76, 89, 102, 

112, 125, 400, 420 

De Medici, Catherine, 122 
Derby, Lady, 117, 118, 127, 193, 
243, 244, 251, 252, 277, 278, 
279, 280, 329, 330, 342, 343, 

344, 345, 346, 347, 369, Z7^, 
380 

Derby, Lord, 117, 279, 281, 282, 
284, 28s, 328, 329, 342, 344, 

345, 353, 369,435 

Disraeli, Benjamin (see Lord 

Beaconsfield) 
Donne, William Bodham, 113 
Doyle, John, 67 
Doyle, Richard, 6y 
Drummond, Thomas, 28 
Dufferin, Lord, 253, 338 
Ducie, Lord, 203, 378, 414 

Edward VL, ioi, 107 

Elizabeth, Queen, 30, 64, 75, 
77, 78, 92, 100, IIS, 1 19-123, 
126, 136, 137, 139-141, 143, 
156, 163-165, 212, 213, 400, 
417, 420, 421, 426, 443 

Emerson, R. W., 31, 41, 205 

Erasmus, 99, 103, 403-409, 413 

Essex, Earl of, 199 

Fisher, Bishop, 63, 75, 95, 102, 
103, 106, 112, 148, 176, 190, 
194, 419 
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 247 
Fitzwilliam, Earl, 244, 246, 247, 
Forster, John, 296, 297, 301 
Freeman, Edward Augustus, his 
neglect of historical S^manu- 
scripts and documents, 148, 
171, 177 ; his qualifications as 



INDEX 



449 



an historian, 149, 151 ; his 
religious and political views, 
149, 150; his antipathy to 
Froude, 150-153 ; his re- 
viewing tactics and methods, 
153, 154, 155-157; his com- 
ments on Froude' s methods of 
treating historical documents, 
157-159 ; his attitude towards 
original research, 160, 242 ; 
his discovery of two faults in 
The History, 161-165 ; his final 
verdict on The History, 165- 
167 ; his reply to Froude's 
challenge to The Saturday 
Review editor, 170, 171 ; his 
attack on Froude's papers on 
the Life and Times of Becket 
175-182 ; his " Last Words on 
Mr. Froude," 184-186; his 
present influence, 186 ; bio- 
grapher's statement regarding 
his character, 381 ; his death, 
381 ; Froude succeeds him as 
Regius Professor of Modern 
History at Oxford, 381 ; ex- 
tract of letter from Stubbs on 
Oxford Professorship, 388 
Frere, Sir Bartle, 268, 277 
Froude, Archdeacon (father), 

2-4, 17, 20, 37,92, 415, 416 
Froude, Mrs. (mother), 4-5 
Froude, Hurrell (brother), 4, 
7-9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 
23, 36, 183, 415 
Froude, John (brother), 7 
Froude, Robert (brother), 4, 7, 

13 
Froude, William (brother), 7, 

17. 391 
Froude, Mrs. (first wife), 53, 114 
Froude, Mrs. (second wife-), 116, 

250, 251 
Froude, Mr. Ashley (son), 352 
Froude, Miss (daughter), 264, 

265 
Froude, James Anthony, his 

birth, 2 ; character of parents, 

(3310) 



2-5 ; his mother's death, 5 ; 
his early reading, 5, 10, 14, 
1 6 ; his charming sisters and 
gifted brothers, 6-8 ; Hurrell's 
harsh treatment, 7-9 ; his 
first school, 9, 10 ; his passion 
for Greek, 10 ; sent to West- 
minster, 10 ; his unhappy and 
unprogressive life at, 10, 11 ; 
returns home in disgrace, 12 ; 
treated with severity by 
his father, 12-14; regarded 
as extremely dull, 9, 13; 
his lonely and unloved boy- 
hood, 13, 14 ; preparation 
for Oxford, 16 ; his passion 
for fishing and yachting, 17, 
115, 127, 378; his religious 
education, 18 ; he goes into 
residence at Oriel College, 
Oxford, 19 ; his early and 
idle life at ; 19-22 ; the in- 
fluence of Newman, 21, 31, 
96, 113, 288, 289 ; an engage- 
ment, 23 ; he takes his degree, 
24 ; offered and accepts tutor- 
ship in Ireland, 26-30 ; he 
returns to Oxford and wins 
Chancellor's prize, 31 ; he 
contributes to the Lives of 
Saints series of tracts, -^Z^ 34 5 
his opinion of St. Patrick, 
34 ; he revisits Ireland, 34, 
35 ; ordained as a deacon, 
35 ; his first book, ^7 5 his 
third visit to Ireland, 41 ; he 
writes The Nemesis of Faith, 
45 ; letter to Kingsley on, 
46, 47 ; letter to Cowley 
Powles on Kingsley, 47 ; the 
reception and effect of The 
Nemesis, 47-49 ; he resigns 
his Exeter Fellowship, 49 ; 
letter to Clough on his in- 
tellectual and material posi- 
tion, 50, 51 ; accepts Kings- 
ley's offer to go and live with 
him, 51 ; free theological 

29 



450 



INDEX 



training at a German Univer- 
sity offered and declined, 52 ; 
letter to Mrs. Kingsley on his 
proposed marriage, 53 ; his 
marriage and removal to 
North Wales, 56, 57 ; letter 
to Max Miiller describing life 
at, 58, 59 ; extract from letter 
to Kingsley on the Incarna- 
tion, 59, 60 ; his views on 
Socialism, 60 ; his first his- 
torical work, 64 ; extract 
from letter to Clough on 
Maurice and The History, 66 ; 
he returns to Devonshire, 67 ; 
he makes the acquaintance of 
the Carlyles, 67 ; extract from 
letter to MiiUer giving his 
views on the Russian War and 
French Alliance, 70, 71 ; his 
close following of Carlyle, 78, 
87, 88, 90, 94, 97, 104, 130, 
132, 133, 201, 210, 220, 227, 
246, 258, 270, 281, 301, 341, 
342, 349, 396, 397 ; his labo- 
rious study and diligent re- 
search, 78, 98, 148, 192, 199, 
242 ; the publication of the 
first two volumes of The His- 
tory, 89 ; reviews of, 91, 96, 
106 ; the success of The 
History, 91, 92, 106, 107 ; the 
weak points in The History, 
loi, 103, 104 ; death of Mrs. 
Froude (first wife) and his 
removal to London, 114; he 
becomes editor of Fraser's 
Magazine, 114; he visits Si- 
mancas in search of material 
for The History, 115, 116 ; his 
second marriage, 116; Lord 
Salisbury gives him permis- 
sion to search Cecil papers at 
Hatfield, 117 ; letters to Lady 
Salisbury on, 11 7-1 21 ; ex- 
tract from letter to Skelton on 
Mary Stuart, 123, 124; his 
verdict on John Knox, 124- 



1 26 ; extract from letter to 
Lady Salisbury on his old- 
fashioned ways, 127 ; his 
favourite churches, 128 ; his 
conventional literary judg- 
ments, 129 ; elected Lord 
Rector of St. Andrews Uni- 
versity, 131, 132 ; asked to 
stand as member of Parlia- 
ment, 132 ; the completion of 
The History, 1 36 ; the true 
hero of, 143 ; his admiration 
of John Knox, 143 ; his views 
on Calvinism, 144-146 ; Free- 
man's attacks on The History 
in The Saturday Review, 148 ; 
the two blots in The History, 
1 61-165 ; his fidelity is at- 
tacked in Freeman's final ver- 
dict on The History, 165-167 ; 
his challenge to the editor of 
The Saturday Review to test 
The History ; 168, 169 ; ex- 
tract from letter to Skelton 
acknowledging the real mis- 
takes in The History, 171 ; he 
writes " A Few Words on Mr. 
Freeman," 182-184; his ap- 
preciation of Hurrell Froude, 
183 ; index to papers collected 
during October, November, 
December, 1856, 189-191 ; 
letter to Lady Derby on the 
accuracy of The History, 193 ; 
his qualifications as an Irish 
historian, 199, 200 ; his ver- 
dict on O'Connell, 200, 201 ; 
invited to lecture in the United 
States, 201 ; extracts from 
letters to Skelton on, 201, 202 ; 
extract from letter to his 
wife on American voyage ; 
202-204 ; his New York ban- 
quet, 204 ; his American lec- 
tures, 206-219 ; American 
criticism, 208, 209, 219-221, 
222 ; extracts from letters 
to Mrs. Froude on American 



INDEX 



451 



tour, 223-227 ; extracts from 
letters to Lady Derby on The 
English in Ireland, 243, 244 ; 
his dislike of Gladstone, 248 ; 
the death of Mrs. Froude 
(second wife), 250 ; he leaves 
London and takes a house at 
Corwen, Wales, 251 ; letter 
to Lady Derby on Corwen, 
251, 252 ; he leaves England 
for South Africa, 256 ; his 
travels in, 259-262 ; he re- 
turns to England, 262 ; his 
second visit to South Africa, 
263-269 ; letter to his daughter 
on the political situation at 
Cape Town, 264, 265 ; he re- 
turns to England, 270 ; the re- 
port of his investigations laid 
before Parliament, 270 ; letter 
to Lady Derby on his proposed 
Parliamentary candidature, 
277, 278 ; extracts from letters 
to Lady Derby on the Eastern 
Question, 279, 280, 281-286 ; 
his opinion of Mrs. Carlyle, 
289 ; his intimate friendship 
with Carlyle, 289, 292, 296, 
297 ; Mrs. Carlyle's Letters 
and Memorials handed over 
to him by Carlyle, 294 ; 
letter from Carlyle regarding 
the publication of, 294 ; asked 
to undertake Carlyle's bio- 
graphy, 297, 298 ; his champion- 
ship of Mrs. Carlyle, 300 ; 
publication of Reminiscences, 
303 ; differences with the 
Carlyle family, 304 ; extract 
from note forbidding publica- 
tion of the Reminiscences, 306 ; 
accused by Mary Carlyle of 
violating Carlyle's directions, 

307 ; his defence, 307, 308 ; 
Mary Carlyle's attempt to 
secure another biographer, 

308 ; extract from letter he 
received from Mr. Justice 



Stephen on, 3 1 1 ; extract from 
letter to Max Miiller regarding 
the biography, 311, 312 ; pub- 
lication of first two volumes 
of Carlyle's Life, 312 ; his 
ideas of a biographer's duty, 
316, 317 ; publication of Let- 
ters and Memorials of Jane 
Welsh Carlyle, 320 ; publica- 
tion of Carlyle's Life in London, 
322 ; letter to Lady Derby 
regarding the biography and 
South African politics, 329, 
330 ; letter to Mrs. Kingsley 
about the Carlyle book, 330, 
331; his opinion of his volume 
on CcBsav, 338 ; letter to Lady 
Derby on CcBsar, 342, 343 ; 
his book on Bunyan, 343, 
344 ; letters to Lady Derby 
on the elections of 1880 and 
1886, 344, 345, 346, 347 ; 
letter from Cardinal Newman, 
347, 348 ; his admiration for 
Newman, 346, 348 ; his eu- 
logy on Luther, 348, 349 ; he 
leaves England for Austra- 
lasia, 352 ; his third visit to 
South Africa, 353, 354; he 
visits Australia, New Zealand, 
and America, 353, 354; his 
visit to the West Indies, 354 ; 
extracts from diary kept dur- 
ing journey to, 355-360 ; pub- 
lication of book on the West 
Indies, 360 ; his views on 
Imperial Federation, 16'i^ ; 
publication of The Two Chiefs 
of Dunboy, 36^-^67 ; his Life 
of Beaconsfield published, 367 ; 
his yachting journeys to Nor- 
way with Lord Ducie, 378 ; 
his passion for the sea, 337, 
377> Z7^ ; he succeeds Free- 
man as Regius Professor of 
Modern History at Oxford, 
381 ; life at Oxford, 384-386, 
390-393 ; the welcome of old 



452 



INDEX 



friends, ^86 ; letter to Lady 
Derby on the death of his 
brother William, 391 ; the suc- 
cess of his Lectures, 384, 401, 
413 ; letter to Skelton on the 
Oxford lecture system, 410 ; 
his popularity at, 411, 412, 
413 ; he leaves Oxford for 
Devonshire worn out and 
broken down, 414 ; his death, 
October 20, 1894, 415 ; the 
man, the historian, and the 
biographer, 415-428 ; his re- 
ligious position, 429-432 ; his 
friends, 433-435 ; his great 
conversational powers, 435, 
436 ; his vast reading and 
wide human experience, 438- 
442. 
References to his works : 

The Shadow of the Clouds, 2>7 ■> 

97 ' 
The Lieutenant's Daughter, ;^y 
The Nemesis of Faith, 45-49, 

56, 97, 398, 443 
Short Studies, 22, 25, 27, 55, 

114, 133, 136, 144, 173, 

200, 201, 219, 257, 259, 261, 

276, 347, 376, 377, 390, 431. 

439 
The History of England, 72- 

146 
The Divorce of Katharine of 

Aragon, 193 
The English in Ireland, 229- 

249 
The Early Life of Carlyle, 288- 

33^ 
Carlyle' s Life in London, 288- 

336 
CcBsar, 337-343 
Life of John Bunyan, 343- 

344 
Oceana, 347, 351 
The English in the West Indies, 

360-364 
The Two Chiefs of Dunhoy, 

365-367, 416 



Life of Beaconsfield, 367-37^ 
Council of Trent, 399-401 
English Seamen, 401-403 
Life and Letters of Erasmus, 
403-409, 413 

Gasquet, Father, 10 i 
Gibbon, Edward, 14, 73, 91, 93, 

124, 131, 168, 193, 396 
Gladstone, W. E., 133, 150, 203, 
207, 211, 242, 247, 248, 253, 
254, 276, 279, 280, 281, 282, 
287, 324, 334, 344, 353, 356, 
370, 371, 373, 392 
Goethe, 405 
Grant, President, 204 
Gratton, Henry, 218, 219, 234, 

240, 243, 244, 246 
Green, J. R., 177, 186 
Greenwood, Mr. Frederick, 168 
Gregory XIII., 122, 138 
Grenfell, Charlotte, 53 
Grey, Sir George, 354, 414 
Grim, Edward, 180, 181, 



, 156 



109, 
190, 
396, 
418, 



Hallam, Henry, 69, 75, 

112, 162, 442 
Harte, Bret, 194, 195, 222 
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 155 
Helps, Sir Arthur, 67, 351 
Henry II., 178, 218 
Henry VIII., 64, 74, 75, 78 
87, 89-91, 92, 94-106, 
III, 121, 136, 143, 174, 
191, 209, 210, 248, 373, 
397, 399, 400, 401, 405, 
419, 420, 426, 428, 440 
Hook, Dean, 151 
Hooper, Bishop, 155, 183 
Hope, Beresford, 123, 147 
Howard, Catherine, 10 1 
Hume, David, 25, 69, 82 
Hume, Mr. Martin, 197, 19 
Hurrell, Miss, 2 



Irving, Edward, 302, 303, 314 
Jackson, Dr., 386 



INDEX 



453 



James I., 213 

James II., 216 

Jeffrey, Francis, 303, 317 

Johnson, Dr., 39 

Jowett, Prof., 383, 392 

Keble, John, i-6, 21, ^6, 148, 

325 
Kimberley, Lord, 254, 255, 257, 

262, 266, 271, 278 
Kingsley, Charles, 40, 41, 46, 47, 

51,52, 58-60, 64, 113, I73»433 
Kingsley, Mrs., 53, 54, 330, 331, 

434 
Knox, John, 2^, 123, 124-126, 
143, 144, 146, 441 

Lake, General, 235 
Lang, Mr. Andrew, 421, 422 
Latimer, Bishop, 107, in, 125, 

183, 400 
Lecky, W. E. H., 232, 233, 237, 

243, 245, 247, 303- 335 
Leo X., 349, 350, 407 
Leslie, Norman, 145 
Lewes, Cornewall, 6y, 96 
Lexovia, Bishop of, 154 
Lightfoot, Dr., 92, 97, 370 
Lockhart, 314, 335 
Louis XIV., 76 
Luther, Martin, 86, 103, 248, 249, 

390, 399, 404, 405 

Macaulay, Lord, 10, 6g, 72, 75, 
9i> 93> 96, 105, 106, 107, no, 
124, 126, 155, 185, 188, 192, 

325, 334, 33^, 362, 379, 399» 

400, 422, 442 
Maitland of Lethington, 123 
Martin, Sir Theodore, 434 
Mary, Queen, 75, 102, 108-110, 

138, 142, 417, 420 
Maurice, F. D., 59, 66, 375 
Melbourne, Lord, 90 
Mill, John Stuart, 10, 44, 291, 

391 
Milnes, Monckton (Lord Hough- 
ton), 29, 52 



Molteno, Sir, J. C, 255, 256, 263, 

266, 268, 272, 275, 353 
Mommsen, Theodor, 72, 340, 341 
More, Sir Thomas, 6^, 75, 76, 95, 
100, 102, 103, 106, 112, 176, 

403, 405 
Morley, Mr. John, 335, 343 
Morton, Earl, 124, 125 
Mtiller, Max, 58, 59, 144, 384, 

385, 386, 387 
Murray, Regent, 123, 125, 138 

Napoleon, Louis, 70, 72, 87, 
440 

Newcastle, Duke of, 89 , 

Newman, Cardinal, 6, 19, 21, 24, 
25, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 
41,46,55,61,73, III, 112, 113, 
288, 289, 291, 347, 348, 389, 
391, 416, 433 

Norfolk, Duke of, 69, 119 

North, Lord, 156 

Norton, Eliot, 332, 333 

O'Connell, Daniel, 27, 201, 

202, 221, 242, 248 
Oxford Movement, The, 7, 21, 62, 

112, 148, 416 

Paget, Dr., 386 

Palmerston, Lord, 88, 90, 113, 

351, 352 
Parker, John, 6^, 69, 1 14 
Parker, Archbishop, 122 
Parsons, Robert, 140 
Peabody, George, 223, 225, 226 
Peel, Sir Robert, 28, 29, 88, 132, 

324, 371 
Philip II., 142, 195-197, 198 
Pitt, William, 236, 237 
Pole, Archbishop, 107, 108-1 10, 

190, 420 
Powles, Cowley, 47, 433 
Pius v., 139 
Pusey, Dr., 30 

Reeve, Henry, 96-106 
Reid, Stuart J., 367, 368, 370 



454 



INDEX 



Richards, Dr., 48, 49 
Ridley, Bishop, 107, iii, 183 
Robertson, Canon, 173 
Robinson, Crabbe, 52 
Robinson, Sir Hercules, 353 
Rossa, O'Donovan, 202, 205 
Ruskin, John, 4, 87, 330, 384 
Russell, Lord John, 133 
Rye, Miss, 253 

Salisbury, Lady, 243 
Salisbury, Robert third Marquis 

of, 345, 38i-383> 384 
Salisbury, James second Mar- 
quess of, 1 1 6-1 18, 119, 243 
Sanday, Prof., 443, 444 
Sarpi, Fra Paolo, 398, 399 
Saturday Review, The, 123, 130, 
146, 169, 174, 179, 217, 393, 

433 
Sewell, Rev. William, 47 
Seymour, Jane, loi, 396 
Sidonia, Medonia, 194, 195-197, 
Simpson, Richard, 142 
Sixtus v., 143 

Skelton, Sir John, 114, 115, 123, 
124, 127, 129, 146, 155, 171, 
172, 201, 202, 252, 287, 311, 
381, 410, 414, 434 . I 
Smith, Goldwin, 384, 388 
Southey, Robert, 303 
Spedding, Margaret, 4 
Spedding, James, 4, 68, 288 
Stanley, Dean, 39, 128, 303, 433 
Stephen, Sir Fitzjames, 250, 301, 
309, 310, 327 



Stephens, Dean, 150, 186, 187 
Stuart, Mary, 63, yy, 78, 1 19, 122, 

123, 124, 126, 137, 139, 142, 

144, 440, 442, 443 
Stubbs, Bishop, 90, 99, 102, 105, 

172, 173, 176, 186, 192, 381, 

384, 388, 390, 410, 411, 442 
Swinburne, Algernon, 129, 137 

Tacitus, 73, 131, 396, 423 
Table Talk of Shirley, 114, 115, 
123, 124, 127, 129, 15s, 171, 
172, 201, 202, 287, 410, 414 
Taylor, Sir Henry, 333 
Tennyson, Lord, 4, 64, 109, no, 

112, 129, 334 
Thirl wall. Bishop, 325 
Thucydides, y^, 131, 396, 399 
Tone, Wolfe, 239, 241, 244, 247 
Trench, Archbishop Richard, 6y 
Tyndall, John, 203, 303, 435 

Upington, Sir T., 353 

Walsingham, Lord, 143, 156, 

164 
Warre, Henrietta (Mrs. Froude), 

116 
Warren, Sir Charles, 353 
Westminster School, 10-12, 19 
Wilberforce, Samuel, 325, 375 
William the Silent, 138 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 67, yy, 89, 102, 

174, 17s. 396 
Wolseley, Lord, 264, 265, 267, 

277, 435 



Press of Haasell, Watson Sr Viney, Ld., Aylesbury, England. 



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